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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!news.cerf.net!nic.cerf.net!rearl From: rearl@nic.cerf.net (Robert Earl) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: [NetBSD] system hangs after multiuser boot Date: 28 Oct 1994 00:37:26 GMT Organization: CERFnet Lines: 59 Message-ID: <38ph47$d6d@news.cerf.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: nic.cerf.net Hi there BSD hackers, I'm having two problems with my NetBSD-almost-1.0 system. These problems have persisted over reinstalls and began after I had been running 0.9 for a little while, so it's not just 1.0 specific. The major obstacle to me running this OS at all is the big hang right after a boot. It only happens *after* I have the entire system loaded and extracted off floppy disk. The system comes up OK and probes all devices, and hangs right after the message: Changing root device to xx0a This has occurred with sd0a, sd1a, and wd0a so it doesn't seem to be related to my controller. The fact that the system does not hang until I have loaded everything off floppy (including etc10.aa) leads me to believe there may be a problem with a corrupted /etc/rc, or a corrupted /sbin/init. Anyone have clues on fixing this one? I'm really desparate to run this OS on my machine, even if I do get frequent panics thanks to a bad SIMM or something :-( The other problem I mentioned is related to the low-level boot code that uses the BIOS. I have a 386DX/40, which has a turbo button for selecting 10 and 40 Mhz. When I boot NetBSD at 40Mhz, I get an endless reboot cycle. It reboots sometime during the kernel load and never gets to print a version message or anything else. If I step down to 10Mhz I get booted OK, every time. This happens anytime I boot off floppy, winchester, or SCSI drives. Dropping down to 10Mhz is a *real* pain, especially when the system panics and comes back up in the middle of the night, and I'm not there to babysit it. I had many a night where I would wake up at 2am (my system would always panic during the daily crontab run if I left it on 40Mhz) and hit the Turbo button to get the system back up. System configuration: Cyrix i386DX/40 noname motherboard and chassis 4MB RAM (1x4 30 pin SIMMs) - I know one of these is bad because I get frequent memory parity errors from Windows Adaptec 1542C SCSI HA 2x 100M Quantum ProDrive SCSI-1 disks (swiped from a Sun Sparc 1) also tried it with a (quite trashed) salvaged 207M Maxtor disk single-speed SCSI CD-ROM 3.5" 1.44M floppy - controlled by Adaptec (I have no real IDE controller) Plus Hardcard 105 IDE drive (builtin IDE controller at int14) Soundblaster 16 audio card (this has been suggested to be the culprit..) 2S+1P+1G card with 16550 UARTs ET4000 SVGA with 1M video memory Any clues... thanks. And please mail directly to me if possible. I can summarise to the group if this has enough interest. --robert -- Robert Earl (619) 455-3900 Programmer, etc. CERFnet (800) 876-2373