# Strange install DVD hangs at boot time - BTX problem?



## user123 (Oct 15, 2014)

Hello,

This is a very old problem. I am not really sure what the reason is.  I think it could be a bug or a configuration issue of the BTX boot loader.

Here is what happened:
I have been a happy FreeBSD user from 1999 to about 2005. But around late 2005 I changed from Adaptec SCSI controllers to LSI Logic controllers. FreeBSD 6.0 was released at that time. With the Adaptec controllers (AHA 2942 if I remember correctly) booting and installing went smoothly as in the earlier versions. However, with the LSI controllers, booting the install DVD always hung the computer instantly. I tried all possible things then, but was unable to find a solution. I have spent countless hours searching what the reason could be.  On computers without LSI Logic controllers all FreeBSD versions booted and installed flawlessly. I also attempted to install FreeBSD on an IDE HD first (without the LSI controller installed in the PC) and then build/install a kernel with LSI Logic drivers enabled. But when I then installed the LSI controller to set up the SCSI disks from the FreeBSD installation on the IDE disk, BTX froze immediately at boot. Thus, my impression is that the hang might be not kernel-related, but could be some problem of the bootstrap loader. Sadly I am not sufficiently knowledgeable about the bootstrap stuff, so I finally gave up.

So I unhappily used OpenBSD and Linux in the years since. I regularly checked almost every FreeBSD release since if it can boot on my PCs with SCSI or SAS drives. But to no avail, as at boot time the DVD drive LED flashed for a fraction of a second and then the computers hanged. Just to mention, I always set IDE mode instead of AHCI to boot the IDE/SATA optical drives. The computers on which I tested all had a conventional (non-UEFI) BIOS. 

Recently I again had lots of Linux problems that were very difficult to tackle due to the fact, that on most Linuxes the configuration data is spread over the whole filesystem instead being concentrated in /etc. So I installed OpenBSD 5.5. But this was a big disappointment, as its performance seems to have degraded much over older (3.x and 4.x) releases.

So I again attempted to set up FreeBSD (10.0), but the boot problem was still there. In my desperateness I then had the idea to try if the PC-BSD install DVD could maybe able to boot. It did! Hoooray! Imagine how happy I was to see the DVD boot and the FreeBSD system start! Now FreeBSD is running on my main PC (HP Z800 with some SAS drives) in the form of PC-BSD 10. 

Here my thoughts/questions:
PC-BSD by default uses GRUB. It actually strongly recommends using GRUB instead of BTX. Could a BTX bug be the reason for the install CD hangs?
I'd prefer to install FreeBSD instead of PC-BSD on my server. But this fails like on my PC, as the server also uses LSI Logic SAS controllers.
Sadly I have only minimal knowledge about bootstrap code (i.e. BTX, GRUB etc) so I cannot do much about it myself. Actually I liked BTX best. I preferred it over GRUB until this problem appeared. Even on dual-OS Linux/Windows PCs I installed it over LILO/GRUB, because it is much easier to select any boot partition on any drive. So I'd be really happy if this problem could be solved.

Does anybody have an idea what could be the problem, if it is not BTX-related?


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## SirDice (Oct 15, 2014)

What's the exact type of the LSI controller? One of the companies I work for have several machines with LSI controllers and they're all running FreeBSD 9.3 just fine. I had no problems booting or installing them. But those machines use mfi(4), yours may be different.


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