FreeBSD boot help

I want to try sub.mesa's zfsguru project but my server refuses to boot FreeBSD. I tried a vanilla FreeBSD disc and it does the same thing so I know its not zfsguru. It's currently running WHS with 0 problems. Here is the system:

Asus A8n-SLI nForce4 mobo
AMD x2 3800+
4gb ram
LSI 1068E pci-e card in HBA mode
4 samsung 1.5tb drives
1 250gb sata drive plugged in to mobo
ide dvd drive (also tried sata dvd drive)
ati radeon PCI video card
nvidia nForce gigabit network (also tried marvell gigabit built in)

When I boot from a FreeBSD install disc (AMD64) it freezes after it initializes atkbd0 and spins down the CD.

I tried safe mode, verbose mode, disable acpi, etc and nothing works.

anyone with any ideas? Google fails me.

here is an ugly cellphone shot of the screen:

I had similiar behaviour in virtualbox with disabled ACPI.

My experience is: update your BIOS and if that doesn't help, try playing with BIOS options.

The older nVidia chipsets never really ran well on FreeBSD. The latest ones are okay though i've got a few systems running on those just fine, including onboard nvidia gigabit.

As alternative, you could try the ZFSguru with FreeBSD9+ZFS v28 LiveCD; it may have a solution to your problem though it is experimental platform. Download link on the zfsguru.com website.

Is it as obvious as booting minus the keyboard plugged in?

My guess is that it has got nothing to do with the keyboard, but rather something that comes after that, and has not yielded any output yet. But that's just a shot in the dark. When i encountered a problem like this, updating the BIOS was the solution. Doesn't mean it'll work for you, of course.

You're probably right sub.mesa. Now that you mention it, I remember using a liveCD of DamnSmall Linux before and had a system that wouldn't boot and stopped like that. I had to use a command line boot option of the OS to disable APIC (not acpi) and then I could get that system running.

my BIOS does say 'ACPI APIC support Enabled' but it is grayed out with no option to disable. However, the manual shows it can be disabled page 4-35. Not sure what that is all about.

I already tried with no keyboard and with a USB keyboard.

I checked online and there is a beta BIOS that is newer. I will try that out tonight.

B34M3R said:

my BIOS does say 'ACPI APIC support Enabled' but it is grayed out with no option to disable.

Click to expand...

Have you tried seeing if changing other options on that page or elsewhere in the BIOS change the grayed down state?

updated to the beta BIOS and it booted right into zfsguru!! The ACPI option is still grayed out but it boots fine now. Now time to play. Thanks!

Sub, would the HP Micro ProLiant server be good enough to handle storage of media and important files only? I was thinking of going with a single large 640GB WD Black in the 5 1/2inch bay and host ESXi and all of my VM's. Then fill up the 4 bays with 2TB drives and have 4GB ram. Would the ESXi vm be able to to see all the drives, if I kept them in AHCI mode?