*BSD News Article 21299


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From: sommerfeld@apollo.hp.com (Bill Sommerfeld)
Subject: Re: Problems with installation of NetBSD 0.9...
Sender: usenet@apollo.hp.com (Usenet News)
Message-ID: <SOMMERFELD.93Sep21100421@snarfblatt.apollo.hp.com>
In-Reply-To: Aaron.Roydhouse@comp.vuw.ac.nz's message of 21 Sep 1993 06:44:13 GMT
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1993 14:04:20 GMT
References: <27ldlm$j27@acsc.com> <AARON.93Sep21184413@downstage.comp.vuw.ac.nz>
Nntp-Posting-Host: snarfblatt.ch.apollo.hp.com
Organization: HP Apollo Systems Division, Chelmsford, MA.
Lines: 27

   I have NetBSD 0.9 on a 486dx2/33 and two identical IDE drives sharing
   the one controller. I began to experience just the behaviour you
   describe after I added the second IDE drive. Specifically on normal
   boot-up it checks the root file system then hangs; every time. If I do
   a fast reboot, thus avoiding the file check, I can then run fsck
   manually and have no problems. Earlier I had one drive and no problem
   on boot-up; well I got the "ISA strayintr 7" anyway but it didn't lead
   to a hang. This isn't a show-stopper for me so long as I avoid the
   "fsck -p" during bootup and run it myself afterwards.

   I don't know for sure the second IDE drive is the real cause, but I
   noted you also had two IDE drives:

There appears to be a deadlock condition which prevents you from doing
I/O on one of the wd disks while you're opening the other for the
first time.. it results in a hang.  I haven't looked at the driver
enough to figure out what's going on, but if you serialize the first
opens of the wdN devices in /etc/rc, the "right thing" happens.

I do this by putting a "dd if=/dev/rwd1a of=/dev/null count=1" in
/etc/rc right before the fsck line.

Since I did this, i haven't had the hang :-) and I haven't been
motivated to actually fix the device driver :-(

						- Bill