FreeBSD 11.0-RC1 boot prompt kernel load issue.

[Murthy Bhat]

Hi,

This is regarding issue faced during OS(FreeBSD 11.0-RC1) installation on the storage behind our smartpqi storage controller.

System used: HP ProLiant ML110 gen9
The iso image downloaded is FreeBSD-11.0-RC1-amd64-disc1 from ftp.freebsd.org

To achieve the OS installation on storage behind our storage controller, we have built 2 binaries.

1) Customized rebuilt kernel by disabling aac modules in /usr/src/sys/amd64/conf/GENERIC file. The size of the kernel is around 26MB. Even we tried a smaller sized kernel by disabling unwanted modules.

2) smartpqi driver compiled for this kernel

During our customized kernel load, there is a system crash and restart(step 5.e below) in the following steps.

1) Copy the driver module ( smartpqi.ko ) & customized kernel in the USB Pen drive.

2) Connect the CD/DVD drive, USB which contains driver module & kernel and the hard drive that is connected to the SmartPQI controller.

3) Insert the FreeBSD Installation disk into CD/DVD drive & boot from it.

4) At FreeBSD boot menu press Escape for boot loader prompt.

5) Perform the following steps at boot loader prompt.

a) See all present modules by executing following command.
# lsmod
Expected Output: It will show all the present modules.

b) unload the kernel module
# unload

c) Check kernel is unloaded or not
# lsmod
Expected Output: It will not show any module.

d) Check whether USB drive detected or not.
# lsdev
Expected Output:
part 0: .............. (removable)
part 1: .............. (removable)
part 2: .............. (removable)

e) Load the kernel (This is the rebuilt kernel by disabling our other Adaptec aac drivers)
# load part< pen drive location >:kernel ==> text is loaded, during data load, there is a crash and system reboot.
Example:
# load part2:kernel

f) Load the driver module
# load part< pen drive location >:smartpqi.ko
Example:
# load part2:smartpqi.ko

g) Continue the Installation procedure, type the following command & Enter.
# boot

6) Install the FreeBSD OS including the kernel source. It is very important to include kernel source.

Please help to resolve this crash issue and thanks in advance.

PS: Even with the original kernel i.e kernel without GENERIC conf modification, the "load partx:kernel" crashes. The same is working in FreeBSD 10.2 and 10.3.


Also if possible please let us know how to blacklist modules during OS installation in FreeBSD. Say to blacklist/block "aac" modules what is the step followed at boot prompt. We tried "set hint.XXX.0.disable=1" etc in boot prompt but no luck.

Regards/Ram
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[John Baldwin]

On Wednesday, August 24, 2016 01:35:08 PM Murthy Bhat wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> This is regarding issue faced during OS(FreeBSD 11.0-RC1) installation on the storage behind our smartpqi storage controller.

Are you using EFI or legacy boot? Also, can you capture a screenshot of the
crash messages? If it is not EFI, we probably crashed in the BIOS routines
used to read data from the USB drive. It may be a BIOS bug (which isn't easily
fixable), but we would need the register dump from the crash to figure anything
out.

--
John Baldwin

[Murthy Bhat]

Thanks for the response.

It is UEFI boot. As such there is no stack dumped on the console during crash. System restarts from the FreeBSD boot prompt without any message on the console. Still I have a picture where monitor goes off during data load. PFA(sorry for the flash)

Regards/Murthy Bhat

-----Original Message-----
From: John Baldwin [mailto:j...@freebsd.org]
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2016 10:52 PM
To: freebsd...@freebsd.org
Cc: Murthy Bhat <murth...@microsemi.com>; FreeBSD...@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: FreeBSD 11.0-RC1 boot prompt kernel load issue.

EXTERNAL EMAIL

[John Baldwin]

On Monday, August 29, 2016 05:37:57 PM Murthy Bhat wrote:
> Thanks for the response.
>
> It is UEFI boot. As such there is no stack dumped on the console during crash. System restarts from the FreeBSD boot prompt without any message on the console. Still I have a picture where monitor goes off during data load. PFA(sorry for the flash)

Ugh. I don't have a good suggestion on debugging this besides adding
printfs to the EFI loader code and/or moving an infinite loop around in
the code to narrow down exactly when it resets. It is quite possibly
specific to the EFI firmware on your machine (at least, reproducing the
issue might be).

[Murthy Bhat]

Hi John,

Thanks for your quick response.

I did the same exercise on a super micro(X59SRL model) server, to segregate the issue. The same issue is reproduced again.

So IMHO this may not be the system UEFI firmware issue due to following two reasons.
1. "load kernel" does not work on 2 different hardware platforms.
2. On FreeBSD 10.3 and 10.2, both the hardware platforms (HP ProLiant ML110 Gen9 and Super micro X59SRL) work without problem.

Could you please advise some work around or any other exercise to narrow down the issue.

Regards/Ram

[Murthy Bhat]

Hi,

I checked both FreeBSD 11 RC2 and RC3 latest stable releases. Same issue exists. When loading the kernel from USB pen drive at boot prompt, system gets switched off.

Could you please help?

Regards/Ram

-----Original Message-----
From: Murthy Bhat
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2016 8:03 PM
To: 'John Baldwin' <j...@freebsd.org>
Cc: freebsd...@freebsd.org; FreeBSD...@FreeBSD.org
Subject: RE: FreeBSD 11.0-RC1 boot prompt kernel load issue.

Hi John,

Thanks for your quick response.

I did the same exercise on a super micro(X59SRL model) server, to segregate the issue. The same issue is reproduced again.

So IMHO this may not be the system UEFI firmware issue due to following two reasons.
1. "load kernel" does not work on 2 different hardware platforms.
2. On FreeBSD 10.3 and 10.2, both the hardware platforms (HP ProLiant ML110 Gen9 and Super micro X59SRL) work without problem.

Could you please advise some work around or any other exercise to narrow down the issue.

Regards/Ram

-----Original Message-----
From: John Baldwin [mailto:j...@freebsd.org]

Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2016 3:57 AM
To: Murthy Bhat <murth...@microsemi.com>

[John Baldwin]

As I said, the only way I know to debug this is to start adding printfs
in various parts of the boot loader to find out which EFI or BIOS call
triggers the panic and then trying to infer from that what the BIOS
routine might not like. If you think it is disk related, then the
sys/boot/i386/libi386/biosdisk.c (for non-EFI) and
sys/boot/efi/libefi/efipart.c are good places to start.