# BTX Loader & SATA Promise PDC40718 SATA300 controller Will Not Boot



## ajsmith21 (Jan 22, 2013)

Issue:
BTX Loader Keeps rebooting the system on many versions of the FreeBSD Boot Disc's

Versions Tested:

7.0-RELEASE-i386-livefs           
FreeBSD-9.1-RELEASE-i386-disc1
8.0-RELEASE-i386-bootonly  
8.0-RELEASE-i386-livefs
FreeBSD-8.3-RELEASE-i386-livefs

Due to Limited Internet Speeds (Sprint Cell Network / No High Speed Available In Area) I was not able to download a whole lot in a short time frame, but still working on getting some others to test. The system that is running on the FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p11 (revision 199506) and running FreeNAS Server Version: 0.686.3 (revision 3011) built on Thu Mar 13 19:20:49 CET 2008 So I am aware the FreeBSD was able to Install before. On i386-full on AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2200+ running at 1799 MHz I have done a lot of research about why it is rebooting on me over and over and found
many places that users have found it to be a BTX Loader issue with SATA Controller Cards giving it an error message.

I was able to get a video of it so I uploaded to my Google Drive:
Plain MP4 Link: 3.2MB
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B43X3d7w32MEdlp1YW5EQmFlR0U/edit
Compressed Zip Link: 2.4MB
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B43X3d7w32MEQkhkcWtsMmdMTWs/edit

Folder In Google Drive You can Access to View:
(I will post any relevant information in this folder as it becomes available)
https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B43X3d7w32MEa0hQODUyU2pUWmc/edit

Reason to Boot a Newer Version of FreeBSD:

I have 3 drives on my Promise PDC40718 SATA300 controller PCI card using software raid 5
They are setup using geom graid5 Configuration:

```
# graid5 list
Geom name: data
State: COMPLETE CALM
Status: Total=3, Online=3
Type: AUTOMATIC
Pending: (wqp 0 // 0)
Stripesize: 65536
MemUse: 0 (msl 0)
Newest: -1
ID: 324261672
Providers:
1. Name: raid5/data
   Mediasize: 1500312633344 (1.4T)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r0w0e0
Consumers:
1. Name: ad10
   Mediasize: 750156374016 (699G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r1w1e1
   DiskNo: 2
   Error: No
2. Name: ad6
   Mediasize: 750156374016 (699G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r1w1e1
   DiskNo: 1
   Error: No
3. Name: ad4
   Mediasize: 750156374016 (699G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r1w1e1
   DiskNo: 0
   Error: No

# graid5 status
      Name         Status  Components
raid5/data  COMPLETE CALM  ad10
                           ad6
                           ad4
#
```


```
******* Working on device /dev/ad4 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=1453521 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=1453521 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Media sector size is 512
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 1 is:
sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
    start 63, size 2930288067 (1430804 Meg), flag 80 (active)
	beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
	end: cyl 129/ head 254/ sector 63
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 4 is:
<UNUSED>

******* Working on device /dev/ad6 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=1453521 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=1453521 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Media sector size is 512
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 1 is:
sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
    start 63, size 2930288067 (1430804 Meg), flag 80 (active)
	beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
	end: cyl 129/ head 254/ sector 63
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 4 is:
<UNUSED>

******* Working on device /dev/ad10 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=1453521 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=1453521 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Media sector size is 512
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 1 is:
sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
    start 63, size 1465149105 (715404 Meg), flag 80 (active)
	beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
	end: cyl 464/ head 15/ sector 63
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 4 is:
<UNUSED>
```

I had to manually setup the SoftRaid from scratch via the CLI of FreeNAS as the drives accidentally got deleted some how and so I set them back up so I could recover the data but it shows now that all the space is free even though I know my data is still there. So my options I found seems to be to run testdisk and PhotoRec to recover my data

The Drives use UFS file system which I assume need FreeBSD to work correctly with the geom graid5. If I am able to use another OS to setup this configuration please let me know, I am willing to try anything, I am very fluent in Ubuntu and Debian so working with any Linux is easy for me to do stuff if I can re-setup this configuration even if it is read-only which I know Ubuntu can do with UFS.

So the main issue for this Thread it to find a resolution to the BTX Loader Error, but an alternative will be considered.

I would appreciate any help that could be given in this matter and I will continue to look for some solutions.

~Aaron J Smith


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