# Installation of new FreeBSD Release on ThinkPad



## photor-freebsd (Sep 30, 2016)

Hello Forum,

I want to come back to FreeBSD.  I had FreeBSD 4 ... 7 installed on my laptop (and desktop) - and then had to change to Linux (now using Arch). I have an "old" IBM ThinkPad X24 (368MB RAM, 40GB HDD) left over which already had FreeBSD running, last was FreeBSD 7.

So, I downloaded CD-image FreeBSD 10.3 RELEASE (DVD-image was not booting) and tried to boot that image using the drive in the dock, but I got stuck with following output (sorry, but I wrote it down by hand):

```
...
(aprobe0:ata1:0:1:0) ATAPI_IDENTIFY
( ... )              CAM status: command time out
ad0: <TOSHIBA MK4026GAX PA100U> ATA-6 device 38154 MB
...
```
These messages are repeated and repeated and ... and I aborted after about 15 minutes.

My research in the web gave me 3 entries(!), from which I get the impression, that this is an issue because of the ThinkPad together with CDROM/DVD-drive. I tried to boot with an old FreeBSD 7 RELEASE - which worked. (BTW: the 10.3-CD worked with my working Laptop ThinkPad X440s - I could boot into the Live system, so image seems to be OK)

Do I have a chance to get FreeBSD newer than 7 to run on the ThinkPad X24? 

Thank you for your help,

Photor  

PS: sorry, if this topic has been discussed here already.


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## ASX (Sep 30, 2016)

At boot, escape at prompt, set this option:

```
set hw.ata.ata_dma=0
```

I didn't used it myself, but had a report that it worked out a similar issue.


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## photor-freebsd (Oct 3, 2016)

Thank you, ASX

I tried it and first it looked as if it works. But later I run into the same endless(?) loop. Here is what I got:

```
ata1: reset tp1 mask=03 ostato=50 ostat1=00
      stat0=0x00 err=0x01 lsb=0x14 msb=0xbe
      stat1=0x00 ....
      reset tp2 stat0=00 stat1=00 devcos=0x300000
```
This plus the open metioned _aprobe0_-block is repeated. 

BTW: if the exact text is needed for better diagnosis I can provide. 
BTW2: I booted from FreeBSD 10.3 RELEASE i386 CD Disk1. Unfortunately. I cannot boot from USB-Stick.

I know that FreeBSD 7 works (it already was installed on that computer). Can it be an option to install this and update via FBSD8, 9, 10 and than 11; This - I think - has to be done with base system only, rigth? But my question is: if I went up to FBSD11, will it work/boot or do I get the same situation? And are the intermediate versions still available?

But 1st option would be ti install FBSD 10.3 or 11 if that's better.

Ciao,

Photor


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## Juha Nurmela (Oct 3, 2016)

photor-freebsd said:


> TOSHIBA MK4026GAX PA100U


 that's the optical drive?

I had similar problem with a T41, but I can't remember exactly what it was, or what fixed it. That Thinkpad is recycled now, can't peek  Vague memory about something in /boot/loader.conf, a sysctl setting and/or some hp-specific kld. It did run 9, 10 and 11 okay.

not much help,
Juha

Slow cogs... I recall installing 9.something from CD. I can't remember booting any later (10 or 11) from CD.

It really wanted to have the (mostly unused) CD drive, did not boot without it.


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## SirDice (Oct 3, 2016)

Looks like the CD player might be a bit dodgy. It has happened to me too on a number of occasions, if the CD drive hasn't been used for years. If the laptop is able to boot from USB you might want to give that a try.


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## photor-freebsd (Oct 3, 2016)

Juha Nurmela said:


> that's the optical drive?


yes.



Juha Nurmela said:


> I had similar problem with a T41, but I can't remember exactly what it was, or what fixed it. That Thinkpad is recycled now, can't peek  Vague memory about something in /boot/loader.conf, a sysctl setting and/or some hp-specific kld. It did run 9, 10 and 11 okay.



At the moment I think about installing FBSD7 or 8 and the update step by step. But I don't know, if the intermediate versions are still available. As far as I know I have to do this step by step - at least for the major version numbers.
Or is it even adviced to do each minor step (8.0 -> 8.1 -> 8.2 -> 8.3 -> 9.0 -> 9.1 .....), too?



Juha Nurmela said:


> Slow cogs... I recall installing 9.something from CD. I can't remember booting any later (10 or 11) from CD.
> 
> It really wanted to have the (mostly unused) CD drive, did not boot without it.



May be the case; it was not used very often. On the other hand booting an old FBSD7 CD worked. So I think the drive (and the dock) is working.



SirDice said:


> Looks like the CD player might be a bit dodgy. It has happened to me too on a number of occasions, if the CD drive hasn't been used for years. If the laptop is able to boot from USB you might want to give that a try.



Unfortunately, the X24 is not able to boot from USB-Drive. (Workaround: see above)

Ciao,

Photor


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## T-Daemon (Oct 3, 2016)

There is someone claiming booting from a USB-pen drive is possible ->Link.
Search for “Thinkpad X24”.


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## photor-freebsd (Oct 3, 2016)

T-Daemon said:


> There is someone claiming booting from a USB-pen drive is possible ->Link.
> Search for “Thinkpad X24”.


Hello T-Daemon,
Thank you for that link, but my X24 does not. The USB is not recognized for booting. I have to boot from CD 

Ciao,

Photor


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## photor-freebsd (Oct 4, 2016)

Hello Forum,

I installed a FreeBSD 8.1 i386 from CD (provided by a magazin, found in my CD-archive). I now play a little bit with it and will update/upgrade successively to newest (AKA will most likely come back with questions  )

Ciao,

photor


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## Juha Nurmela (Oct 4, 2016)

Spirit 

Something you might regret later, what version of UFS will your root-fs end up as ? I don't know if it's important at all, or if you can fix it later, just an idea.

Juha


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## photor-freebsd (Oct 4, 2016)

Hello Juha
During install the partitions are formated/newfs-ed with UFS2. Is there something newer/better?

Ciao,
Photor


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## Juha Nurmela (Oct 4, 2016)

I don't know, (ZFS?) , just a wild thought, if/when you will be spending lot's of time on the job.

Juha


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## SirDice (Oct 5, 2016)

Juha Nurmela said:


> Something you might regret later, what version of UFS will your root-fs end up as?


UFS2 has been the default since FreeBSD 5.0. 

Because the laptop is using i386 I would recommend against using ZFS.


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## photor-freebsd (Oct 5, 2016)

Somewhere I read about ZFS and that it needs memory. As this laptop has only 380 MB of RAM I did not think about using ZFS.
BTW I am thinking about an SSD. But I do not know if that is possible in that machine. For the first I will "train" myself in operating FBSD.

Ciao,

Photor


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## SirDice (Oct 5, 2016)

photor-freebsd said:


> I am thinking about an SSD. But I do not know if that is possible in that machine.


The machine simply detects a disk, it can't really tell the difference. Looking at some of the previous outputs it looks like this laptop uses IDE. I've never seen an IDE SSD, not even sure they exist.


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## kpa (Oct 5, 2016)

SirDice said:


> I've never seen an IDE SSD, not even sure they exist.



I have one sitting on my shelf, it's a Transend 8GB 2.5" SSD. It's terrible though because it has a firmware (as I've read somewhere) that optimizes the operation for FAT32 only.


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## photor-freebsd (Oct 5, 2016)

OK. Thank you. I dream is dying  

Ciao,

Photor


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## tobik@ (Oct 5, 2016)

SirDice said:


> The machine simply detects a disk, it can't really tell the difference. Looking at some of the previous outputs it looks like this laptop uses IDE. I've never seen an IDE SSD, not even sure they exist.


They do exist, but are way too expensive. I don't if anyone even produces them anymore. It's cheaper to just use a normal SSD with an appropriate adapter. There are M.2->IDE adapters for ~6 EUR out there.


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## photor-freebsd (Oct 6, 2016)

Thank you, tobik. I will keep it in mind. Have to figure out, how to change hard disk in that machine.

I am now about to update (playing with the system and "FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE HAS PASSED ITS End-OF-LIFE DATE." ). Do I need to step through all minor releases or is it possible to update directly to FreeBSD9 afterwards to FreeBSD10 etc?[1]

Awaiting the adventure,

Photor

[1] and I hope I will not end up in the same loop that made me post here (see 1st post of the thread)


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## SirDice (Oct 6, 2016)

You should be able to upgrade to 9.x, there's no need to step through all the 8.x releases. In theory it should also be possible to jump directly to 10.x but that might be too big a step at once.


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## photor-freebsd (Oct 7, 2016)

Thank you SirDice, I will try like this. At the moment there are no ports installed. So, that should do without too much overhead.

Ciao,

Photor


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## photor-freebsd (Oct 7, 2016)

Hello,

I tried to go from 8.1 up to 9.1 (same going up to 9.3) doing

```
# freebsd-update -r 9.1-RELEASE upgrade
```
and I got:

```
...
The update metadata is correctly signed, but
failed an integrity check.
Cowardly refusing to proceed any further.
```
Now I am going to 8.3 first (also, to just learn). This is running a.t.m. Is there a "major" change in the system between 8.X and 9.X?
BTW: in between I crashed the system by following the handbook[1] updating the system with a customized kernel. I am going now with GENERIC - don't worry! Still having fun 

Ciao,

Photor

[1] FreeBSD Handbook (German edition) https://www.freebsd.org/doc/de_DE.I...sdupdate.html#freebsd-update-custom-kernel-9x


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## photor-freebsd (Oct 10, 2016)

Hello,

I did some upgrading on the weekend and reached FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE using `freebsd-update` which was new to me. But now doing the last step up to 11.0-RELEASE I get `... /var: filesystem full`. This is due to /var/db/freebsd-update-directory, which carries 1.2 GB (in subfolder files) after update marathon.

Is there a command to clean this db?

Ciao,

Photor


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## ivosevb (Oct 10, 2016)

`sudo find /var/db/freebsd-update/files -type f -print0 | sudo xargs -0 rm`


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## SirDice (Oct 10, 2016)

You can remove everything, anything missing will get downloaded anyway. `rm -rf /var/db/freebsd-update/*`


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## photor-freebsd (Oct 10, 2016)

ivosevb said:


> `sudo find /var/db/freebsd-update/files -type f -print0 | sudo xargs -0 rm`


I tried it. But unfortunately the upgrade was not completed and I ended with an unbootable system . 

Luckily, I was able to find a bootable kernel (/boot/kernel.old using FixIt.  But finishing the update/upgrade was no possible; all `freebsd-update`-commands did not work. I rolled it back and do the upgrade to 11.0-RELEASE again - seems to work.



SirDice said:


> You can remove everything, anything missing will get downloaded anyway. `rm -rf /var/db/freebsd-update/*`


I found something similar in the web in the meanwhile. Does that mean, it is a useful strategy to clean that directory regularly (e.g. after each upgrade)?

Another question comes up - again. Now  that I approach to the latest RELEASE (with GENERIC kernel because I used smallest system to go from 8.1 to 10.3) I do get the messages I already posted at the thread start (endless loop) if I boot with dock (= CDRom)  - without that I have no problem to boot up to the login.

I think, the only way to avoid that is to create a custom kernel, right? Upgrade has to got the old way `make buildworld make buildkernel ...` then (I may need the CDRom sometimes).

Ciao,

Photor

BTW: maybe it is time to start a new thread - at least for the last topic.


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