# 7.2 AMD64 CD won't boot up keeps rebooting



## BSDRich (Jul 3, 2009)

CD Loader 1.2

Building the boot loader agruments
Looking up /BOOT/LOADER... Found
/


The above text is all I see on the screen then the system reboots itself. This is the same install CD I used to set up another machine so I know it's good. I can still boot the other machine with it. 

system:
Foxconn Digitalife A79A-S motherbd.
AMD Phenom 9500 64bit 2.2GHz quad
2G RAM
2 disk RAID0, (will be the main boot)
1 disk SATA (will be the backup drive)

Any ideas how I can get FreeBSD to install? Is this supported hardware? I don't see why it shouldn't be it's common off the shelf stuff. Oh, and I'm dual booting Win 7 on the first partition (I know, I'll hang my head in shame) so I know the PC works. I have another dual boot machine with Win7/FreeBSD7.2 on RAID that works but it's Intel, I just can't get it to install on this one.

When I boot the install CD on another machine I see after the above text where the problem occurs the following:

Relocating the loader and the BTX
Starting the BTX loader
BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.02

This text is not showing up on the problem machine. This is where it reboots itself. Any help is appreciated.

thanks


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## iic2 (Jul 4, 2009)

I brought a new AMD Phenom a few weeks ago and I downloaded 7.2 amd64.  I pop the CD in it took me to partitioning and I went to install and it said no device detected.  I did it four times than I downloaded 8.0 current and it worked.  It was an old CD ROM 2004, so I know it was compatable.


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## BSDRich (Jul 4, 2009)

I'm glad you're having more luck than me. My 8.0 200906 CD does the same. Out of curiosity I tried my 7.0 32bit disc and got this:


```
CD Loader 1.2

Building the boot loader agruments
Looking up /BOOT/LOADER... Found
Relocating the loader and the BTX
Starting the BTX loader

BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01

int=0000000d  err=00000000  efl=00030006  eip=00002162
eax=00000000  ebx=7f8af000  ecx=00000014  edx=534d4150
esi=00000000  edi=7f8b0000  ebp=00000000  esp=000003be
cs=cf80  ds=96c0  es=0000    fs=0000  gs=0000  ss=8ffa
cs:eip=67 66 26 c7 03 50 72 6f-65 67 66 26 c7 43 04 00
       00 70 00 67 66 26 89 7b-08 67 66 26 89 43 0c e8
ss:esp=92 48 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 03
       00 00 00 f0 8a 7f 50 41-4d 53 14 00 00 00 00 10
BTX halted
```

Can anyone tell anything from this? Can you install the 32bit version on a 64 bit machine? The BTX is now 1.01 and it seems to have gotten a little further. At least it didn't reboot itself. Remember, Windows 7 did install on this machine. If Windows can do it FreeBSD can. I also installed from this CD on an Intel 64bit machine, this one is AMD. So it seems like something with my hardware not being recognized by BTX.


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## Beastie (Jul 4, 2009)

Have you tried booting off the livefs CD (it's in the same directory on the FTP server), then switching CDs (livefs->disk1) when sysinstall starts?


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## BSDRich (Jul 4, 2009)

I havn't tried the livecd yet. I boot from disc1 then install the rest over the net. Isn't that what the livecd does too? What's the difference? Anyway, I got some more info. In the BIOS I set the OnChip SATA type to native IDE instead of RAID and then the CD booted up past BTX and proceeded normally. It did recognize my drives as single discs but I want RAID. The RAID is handled by AMD southbridge SB750. I looked at the hardware compatability list for 8.0;

http://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/CURRENT/hardware/proc.html

It says it supports AMD 64 "Clawhammer". Are you kidding me? That came out years ago. What am I doing wrong? Is that the real compataility list? Has anyone installed FreeBSD on RAID using AMD SB750 southbridge?


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## BSDRich (Jul 4, 2009)

iic2 said:
			
		

> I brought a new AMD Phenom a few weeks ago and I downloaded 7.2 amd64.  I pop the CD in it took me to partitioning and I went to install and it said no device detected.  I did it four times than I downloaded 8.0 current and it worked.  It was an old CD ROM 2004, so I know it was compatable.



Was it on RAID?


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## BSDRich (Jul 6, 2009)

FreeBSD will not install on this nice new machine I got. I guess it's back to Windows for me. Bummer.


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## iic2 (Jul 6, 2009)

> Was it on RAID?


Sorry I miss your post.

I don't think so. The motherboard has everything that I am still learning about.  I just use an old sony CD ROM because when I had my new system build by Fry Computers I forgot to get a new cdrom and floppy so I use old ones I had at home.  I plug the cdrom into the standard IDE port.

My sada HDD is plug in to SATA port.  Now I got all this power and don't know what to do with it.  But its is dedicated to learn freeBSD.

AMD Phenom II X4 -2.6Ghz -TRUE - 6.0mb total-Cache; AM3 
BI-STAR - TA790GX A3+ mother board with TV tuner - 4 slot mem 
2 sticks - Viper - DDR3 4 gig ram 
Seagate Sata-Barracuda 500 GB/Go

I know exactly how you feel.  Since 7.2 did not work I just had a feeling that 8.0 would, and it did.  I have not seen a problem yet for what little I been doing with it.  And I thank God I did not have to give this machine to Windows.

Here is my dmesg.boot.  Maybe you can see something that can give you a clue.  I hate to see you give up.  If you need me to do something tell me in full detail and I'll generate the report for you.  My set-up is simple, straight off the standard cd AMD64 8.0 current.  This machine will not be connected to the Internet until I learn more about how to use freeBSD.  It's only a learn tool for me and a web machine latter in the future.

See attachment:


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## iic2 (Jul 6, 2009)

> It did recognize my drives as single discs but I want RAID.


Now I understand.  I don't have any RAID disk.  I think I'll try that some day.  I don't know what the big deal is about RAID other than some kind of back-up disk.  I'm sure this is a silly idea and is not your intended goal but I would try to switch it around,  FreeBSD on Sata just to see what happen.  Now you will know the moterboard is ok.

Switch it back than go to masm32 ( post question and complete code under The Campus ) and hope Vortex or MichaelW respond.  They read ASSEMBLER bug-reports like the back of their hands.  After posting I would than e-mail these guys if others cannot help you.  But you can bet your life someone will solve that problem. 85% chance.  They use to not like c people but you can work around that with the word PLEASE ... Just kidding because they don't like that word either   Just be persistent


```
BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01

int=0000000d  err=00000000  efl=00030006  eip=00002162
```

PS:
Also fasmforum (FASM) has a UNIX and LINUX section and they know this stuff very well.  So there is no reason to give up.  Let us know the out-come.  Good luck.


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## BSDRich (Jul 6, 2009)

> I don't know what the big deal is about RAID other than some kind of back-up disk.



Speed or backup. You should read up on it, it doesn't take long to see there are several different configurations for different purposes.

Do you think it's faster to write back and forth between two drives or just write to one? RAID0 is writing (or reading) back and forth to two (or more) drives that are configured to look like one to your system. When writing a file to one drive you have to wait for the head to seek to the track then wait for the disc platter to come around to the sector you want. While it's doing all that you can be writing the next chunk of data to another drive that's doing the same thing. Back and forth (or to 3 or more drives down the line till the first one's ready for another chunk of data). That's what RAID0 is (also called striping). It's like having two (or more) people work for you at the same time instead of one. Would you rather have two (or more) people dig a hole for you at the same time or one? So you end up with all the even blocks of your file on one drive and all the odds on the other (for 2 drive configuration). So what happens if one of the two drives in a RAID0 dies? All your left with is all the evens chuncks or odds depending which drive died. In other words your data is toast. The raid0 is for speed, it's faster that's why I want it for my main drive but there's the risk of data loss if a drive dies. That's why I have a single drive (therefore slower) to back everything up on. Usually I ghost the whole partitions over to the other disk but having ghost recognize raid is another whole area of problems. I'll probably have to dd it all over if I can't get ghost to see the drives. Fun.

I saw the review on your mb. 
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/252549-29-phenom-biostar-ta790gx-review

Nice, similar to mine with Realtek LAN but you haven't installed from the network, mines not working.



> I'm sure this is a silly idea and is not your intended goal but I would try to switch it around, FreeBSD on Sata just to see what happen. Now you will know the moterboard is ok.



No not silly at all. I did try that. It boots with RAID disabled but the network didn't work during the install. It didn't see any DHCP server but another machine does. That machine is Intel with ICH9 RAID controller and Marvel LAN controller. FreeBSD 7.2 works on that machine with RAID and the network. No trouble at all on that machine. I'm having trouble with the AMD and Realtek stuff.


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## tingo (Jul 6, 2009)

Just a quick note: do not ever think that raid is any kind of backup solution. It is used for speed or operational security (less downtime).


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## BSDRich (Jul 8, 2009)

Isn't a RAID1 mirrored set a type of backup? If one drive dies you've got another copy of the data.


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## DutchDaemon (Jul 8, 2009)

So you delete a file by mistake on a RAID1 set. Tell me how you restore it from the backup disk.


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## iic2 (Jul 8, 2009)

> BSDRich wrote:  The raid0 is for speed, it's faster that's why I want it for my main drive but there's the risk of data loss if a drive dies. That's why I have a single drive (therefore slower) to back everything up on.



I read that to.  I'm going to read more.  I think you said toasted also.  Mirroring is same as risk and may get the bad mirror at that momment, little loss or big virus etc. Other than that I think I like it.

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid5_gci214332,00.html

FOUND IT AGAIN:
http://www.d-silence.com/articles/raid.shtml

It's a hard call.


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## BSDRich (Jul 9, 2009)

> So you delete a file by mistake on a RAID1 set. Tell me how you restore it from the backup disk.



Ah I see what you mean. No RAID1 is not to prevent people from deleting their own files. It's just a duplicate copy in case one drive dies. It's a hardware backup. Let me be clear, when I speak of RAID backup this discussion is just pertaining to RAID1 mirror. If you have a single drive and it dies you loose everything. If one of the two dies in a RAID1 you still have a copy of your data. Isn't that a form of backup? I guess it depends on what you mean by "backup". Is an exact copy of your data considered a backup? I would say yes and in this case the backup is still tied directly to the original, a change in the original is reflected in the copy. Maybe we shouldn't use the term "backup" but "duplicate copy". It's a duplicate copy of your data at that moment. Then what is the definition of "backup"? Webster's defines it as; "a copy of computer data (as a file or the contents of a hard drive)" which this is. So we see there are different kinds of backups; one where the copy changes as the original changes and one where it doesn't.


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## BSDRich (Jul 9, 2009)

> Mirroring is same as risk and may get the bad mirror at that momment, little loss or big virus etc.



Ya, that's why I don't use RAID1 mirrors. You get something bad on one and it goes to the other. I suppose it has it's purpous. If that's all you got I guess it would be better than a single disc. 

   I could also configure my three discs as RAID5 but for some reasom I don't feel as safe with my data as with a 2 drive RIAD0 and a single drive backup. I have 2 500Gs in a RAID0 for 1TB. And a 1TB drive for backup. I could also configure these three drives as a 1.5TB RAID5. It would have more space even though it would waste half of the terabyte drive and also be a little faster since it would be striping across 3 drives instead of 2. Hmmm... Now you got me thinking about converting to a 3 drive RAID5. Which would you guys choose? Here's the risk of data loss;

Current configuration:
1. One or two drives fail in the RAID0, one copy of data left in the single drive.
2. The single drive fails, leaving one copy of data in the RIAD0.

3 drive RAID5:
3. One drive fails leaving a functioning system with one copy of the data.

Currently I can tolerate two drives failing in the RAID0 and still have a copy of the data on the single drive. The other two configurations can't tolerate two drives failing and still have the data intact. That's not really a big deal since I have everything imoprtant backed up and have images of the system. Plus it's unlikely both drives in the RAID0 will fail at the same time but possible. The only other tiny little problem is that FreeBSD will not install on my system if it's set to RAID.


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## DutchDaemon (Jul 10, 2009)

BSDRich said:
			
		

> If you have a single drive and it dies you loose everything. If one of the two dies in a RAID1 you still have a copy of your data. Isn't that a form of backup?



No, you're confusing backup and redundancy here. Related, but not the same. Let's say that redundancy allows you to switch/continue, backup allows you to backtrack/restore.


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## danger@ (Jul 10, 2009)

a common mistake is to confuse mysql backups with mysql replication...


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## iic2 (Jul 10, 2009)

*back to original problem - or both*

Just another guest:  Maybe its in the bios setting  ... 

Interrupt 19:



> When enabled, this BIOS feature allows the ROM BIOS of these host adaptors to "capture" Interrupt 19 during the boot process so that drives attached to these adaptors can function as bootable disks.



http://www.techarp.com/showfreebog.aspx?lang=0&bogno=290


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## BSDRich (Jul 12, 2009)

> I could also configure these three drives as a 1.5TB RAID5."




Doi, I'm an idiot. I forgot that one drives worth of space would be lost to parity so it would still only be 1TB. And the write penelty and XOR would slow it down too. I'll stick with stripe.

In Windows we have to load a driver from the "F6 floppy" before windows can see the raid and install onto it. Is there a similar thing for FreeBSD? I think this is what's refered to as "fakeraid".


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## BSDRich (Jul 12, 2009)

> Just another guest: Maybe its in the bios setting ...
> 
> Interrupt 19:



I don't have a setting for that but maybe that's what's happening when I enable RAID in the BIOS. Then the ROM BIOS option is available on boot. But My system reboots on the install CD when it gets to the BTX loader if RAID is enabled. So I haven't been able to install FreeBSD on this machine to a RAID. 

   After all the hassle I've come to the conclusion that fakeraid is not worth the hassle for for multi-boot with windows and non-windows OSes. If it works great if not forget it and use single drives. The mobd. manufacturers only make drivers for windows. It may or may not work for other OSes.


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