freebsd stable - Oct 2003 - SMP + Compaq 2DH Array Controller cause freeze in boot

Good day all,

I've recently added a new piece of hardware to my collection - it's a
Compaq Proliant 1600R with a Smart Array 2DH controller and dual
processors. Unfortunately these features don't seem to play well
together.

Installing FreeBSD 4.8 was very smooth. After doing a CVSup, one of my
first tasks was to compile a new kernel with SMP support. The compile
went fine, but when I reboot with the new kernel, the box freezes at:

"Mounting root from ufs:/dev/idad0s2a"

After doing some searching on the mailing lists I found that this
problem has been encountered by a few people over the last three or four
years.

One solution in the past for a similar problem was to tell the Compaq
BIOS that you are running Windows NT. Compaq tries to disable SMP
support for operating systems it doesn't think will support it. I tried
this fix with no success. Another person tried selecting Linux with
success, however that was on a different model - mine has no option for
Linux.

Does anyone have any solutions, or will this bug remain unfixed?

Thank you all for your time,

Edward Aronyk

On Sun, Oct 05, 2003 at 04:58:53AM -0600, Edward Aronyk
wrote:
> 
> One solution in the past for a similar problem was to tell the Compaq
> BIOS that you are running Windows NT. Compaq tries to disable SMP
> support for operating systems it doesn't think will support it. I tried
> this fix with no success. Another person tried selecting Linux with
> success, however that was on a different model - mine has no option for
> Linux.
What's the rev. on your BIOS?  You may find that dl'ing and applying
Compaq's latest BIOS update will add that option.

> Does anyone have any solutions, or will this bug remain unfixed?
Set the BIOS to Novell SMP - then it works fine. This is true of just about
every SMP Compaq I have come across.

-pcf.