15.1.6.1 not booting on Soekris net6501

[weust]

I just installed (twice) the new version. i386 serial USB drive.

Installation went without a problem, apart from the Local Echo problem which makes reading almost anything from start till I press the Enter key on the menu (I can sorta see the box it draws for the menu options).
After that I displays everything just fine.
Got the same thing with pfSense. Baud speed of 19200 (in case of pfSense) and 115200 don't matter.
Local Echo is at Auto. On of Off won't make a difference.

Anyway, the big problem is that on bootup I see the selecting F1 FreeBSD and F6 PXE, and once it starts it reboots the machines. Not even the /boot/serialwhatever line.

Below is what I see in the serial console.

1 Seconds to automatic boot.   Press Ctrl-P for entering Monitor.

F1  FreeBSD

F6 PXE
Boot:  F1


POST: 0123456789bcefghipsajklnopqr,,,tvwxy








comBIOS ver. 1.41c  20121115  Copyright (C) 2000-2011 Soekris Engineering.

net6501

0512 Mbyte Memory                        CPU Atom E6xx 600 Mhz

On the second installation I did a Custom install to see if I could select anything special.
But that is not the case.

[mikeboss]

yup, I can confirm this behavior with my net6501. installation onto an mSATA SSD went fine but then it'll never boot properly. I had zero trouble to get OPNsense up and running on my PC Engines APU though...

regards,
michael

[weust]

Good to hear it's not just me then.

[franco]

Here is something that I found, but I have no idea how that applies to us. Sorry guys, I'm stabbing in the dark without the hardware.

http://www.yawarra.com.au/tutorials/how-to-install-pfsense-on-a-net6501/

[weust]

Didn't know that link yet. I used the pfSense wiki page before. Not that much info there, ad it pretty much just worked.
I will try and check things tomorrow.
And if I can't get it to work, I hopefully will have my Supermicro Superserver in by next weekend so I can run OPNsense virtualized. And then perhaps I could ship you my net6501 for testing.

[franco]

That would be awesome. I'm guessing it needs a bit of loader tweaks, which need to go in the installer / direct disk images as soon as the build support is here.

[jstrebel]

Hi,
i See the following on the serial console booting it up on the 6501
jakob

KDB: debugger backends: ddb        d                      s                 +   x8
KDB: current backend: ddb
ACPI BIOS Error (bug): A valid RSDP was not found (20130823/tbxfroot-223)
panic: running without device atpic requires a local APIC
cpuid = 0
KDB: enter: panic
[ thread pid 0 tid 0 ]
Stopped at      kdb_enter+0x3e: movq    $0,kdb_why
db>

[jschellevis]

Hi,
i See the following on the serial console booting it up on the 6501
jakob

KDB: debugger backends: ddb        d                      s                 +   x8
KDB: current backend: ddb
ACPI BIOS Error (bug): A valid RSDP was not found (20130823/tbxfroot-223)
panic: running without device atpic requires a local APIC
cpuid = 0
KDB: enter: panic
[ thread pid 0 tid 0 ]
Stopped at      kdb_enter+0x3e: movq    $0,kdb_why
db>

I have seen this error on a mailing list before with pfSense 2.2-Alpha but as far as I know the issue was caused by trying to run a amd64 version instead of 32bit. See this: http://lists.pfsense.org/pipermail/list/2014-April/006016.html

[jstrebel]

jschellevis,
I think you are right. (I was inserting the image from my APU into the 6501)
Jakob

[jschellevis]

Can you try again with 32bit image? Perhaps we can get a bit more information on what is going wrong...
It may just be the baudrate as I think the soekris boards do not like it that the bootloader switches to 115200.

If so you can try to change the /boot.config file to -S19200 -D and also change the config.xml with same serial speed...

[weust]

I take it I have to do that after installing and choosing the Shell option before the reboot?
I'm not familiar with *BSD when it comes to installing and troubleshooting. More Linux which I try to never ever use again.

I'm at work right now, so will have to wait till tonight before I can try.

[jschellevis]

You will have to mount the partition from a working system and make the changes if it does not boot at all.

If it boots but does not show serial output then you can make the config.xml change in the GUI (select the correct serial speed) and the other from the shell by using ssh (enable ssh in the Advanced menu).

I can also create an image for you with 19200 that you can dd onto a CF (lets say 2Gb) if you are not able to do it yourself.

[weust]

It doesn't boot at all, just shows the selection (F1 FreeBSD, and F6 PXE) and after selecting F1 (pressing enter that is) it just reboots.

I might try altering it from pfSense by placing the second SSD (the one with OPNsense on it) and use it's shell to alter the OPNsense files.

If instead of a CF I can use a USB flash drive too, then sure. The net6501 doesn't have a CF slot.
Only mSATA and USB ports.

Right now I don't have a working FreeBSD workstation installation as the laptop I was trying to install it on refuses to boot from the hard drive.

[jstrebel]

jschellevis,
I will try a 32 bit version on the 6501 this evening.
Jakob

[jstrebel]

Hi,
I can confirm 6501 i386 does not boot from mSATA.
Here is what I did:
- loaded the opensense i386 to the USB
- (I) install to mSATA SSD
- reboot -->> wich fails, see log below

Remark: what is the block size the installer writes to the mSATA SSD?
I had problems (in another case) when I used large block i.e 64k writing the image with dd. After I used bs=512 all went well.
Jakob

6501 Console LOG:
5 Seconds to automatic boot.   Press Ctrl-P for entering Monitor.

F1  FreeBSD
F6 PXE
Boot:  F1
POST: 0123456789bcefghipsajklnopqr,,,tvwxy
comBIOS ver. 1.41c  20121115  Copyright (C) 2000-2011 Soekris Engineering.
net6501
2048 Mbyte Memory                        CPU Atom E6xx 1600 Mhz
SATA AHCI BIOS ver. 0.61 20121115  Copyright (C) 2003-2011 Intel Corporation
Controller Bus#02, Device#06, Function#00: 02 Ports, 01 Devices
Port-00: Hard Disk, SATA SSD
Port-01: No device detected
Soekris USB Expansion ROM ver. 1.01  20111203

Initializing Intel(R) Boot Agent GE v1.3.72
PXE 2.1 Build 089 (WfM 2.0)

Slot   Vend Dev  ClassRev Cmd  Stat CL LT HT  Base1    Base2   Int
--------------------------------------------------------------------
00:00:0 8086 4114 06000005 0007 0000 00 00 00 00000000 00000000
00:23:0 8086 8184 06040000 0107 0010 08 00 01 1FFF1000 A0FFA000 10
00:24:0 8086 8185 06040000 0107 0010 08 00 01 3FFF2000 A2FFA100 11
00:25:0 8086 8180 06040000 0107 0010 08 00 01 5FFF4000 A4FFA300 05
00:26:0 8086 8181 06040000 0107 0010 08 00 01 0FFF1000 00FFA000 09
00:31:0 8086 8186 06010000 0003 0000 00 00 80 00000000 00000000
02:02:0 8086 8804 0C031002 0106 0010 00 00 80 A0000B00 00000000 09
02:02:1 8086 8805 0C031002 0106 0010 00 00 80 A0000C00 00000000 09
02:02:2 8086 8806 0C031002 0106 0010 00 00 80 A0000D00 00000000 09
02:02:3 8086 8807 0C032002 0106 0010 00 00 80 A0000E00 00000000 09
02:06:0 8086 880B 01060102 0107 0010 00 00 00 00000000 00000000 11
02:08:0 8086 880C 0C031002 0106 0010 00 00 80 A0004800 00000000 10
02:08:1 8086 880D 0C031002 0106 0010 00 00 80 A0004900 00000000 10
02:08:2 8086 880E 0C031002 0106 0010 00 00 80 A0004A00 00000000 10
02:08:3 8086 880F 0C032002 0106 0010 00 00 80 A0004B00 00000000 10
02:10:1 8086 8811 07000201 0107 0010 00 00 80 00001041 A0004D00 09
02:10:2 8086 8812 07000200 0107 0010 00 00 80 00001049 A0004D10 09
02:12:2 8086 8817 0C800000 0106 0010 00 00 80 00000000 A0005000 05
02:12:3 8086 8818 0C090000 0106 0010 00 00 80 00000000 A0005200 05
03:00:0 111D 803A 0604000E 0107 0010 08 00 01 3FFF2000 A2FFA100
05:00:0 8086 10D3 02000000 0107 0010 08 00 00 A1000000 00000000 09
06:00:0 8086 10D3 02000000 0107 0010 08 00 00 A2000000 00000000 10
08:00:0 111D 803A 0604000E 0107 0010 08 00 01 5FFF4000 A4FFA300
10:00:0 8086 10D3 02000000 0107 0010 08 00 00 A3000000 00000000 10
11:00:0 8086 10D3 02000000 0107 0010 08 00 00 A4000000 00000000 11

1 Seconds to automatic boot.   Press Ctrl-P for entering Monitor.
F1  FreeBSD
F6 PXE
Boot:  F1

This repeats on and on.