freebsd stable - Aug 2005 - Dell Latitude D510

Hi all,

I'm a bit of a newbie, with 5.x and hope someone can help me.

I have a dell Latitude D510 with the mist recent BIOS installed.
I have win XP factory installed, boots fine.
I have tried installing the following on a partition:

5.4 FreeBSD
	BTX Halted and goes no further straight after the install option screen, ie
1 - FreeBSD, 2 - FreeBSD without ACPI

5.3 FreeBSD
	Gets a little further, but drops out on a panic, while trying to load the
usb devices, I think

4.11 FreeBSD
	Same as 5.3
4.10 FreeBSD
	Same as 4.10

I did a google, looked in the handbook, but couldn't find anything that it
might be.

Regards,

Brian

On Fri, 26 Aug 2005 18:23+0100, Brian Doherty wrote:
> I have a dell Latitude D510 with the mist recent BIOS installed.
> I have win XP factory installed, boots fine.
> I have tried installing the following on a partition:
I have the same model and experienced the very same problem a couple
of weeks ago. John Nielsen suggested I should try booting 5.2.1 but I
haven't had any time to do so.

The problem as it was explained to me, is related to FireWire.
If you could boot the laptop with a custom kernel without any FireWire
support I guess you might succeed.

In the good old days you could disable in the kernel all the drivers
you didn't need, but AFAIK the kernel configuration utility in the
install kernel of today's version of FreeBSD is not nearly as good as
it was in the old days.

Even further, perhaps someone will look into the matter, and make
FireWire support optional at boot time.

I really miss the old kernel configuration utility... *sigh*
Hey guys, put it back into shape!

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Trond Endrest?l                          |   trond@fagskolen.gjovik.no
Patron of The Art of Computer Programming|   FreeBSD 4.8-S & Pine 4.55

Brian Doherty wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm a bit of a newbie, with 5.x and hope someone can help me.
:-) Here goes ...
> I have a dell Latitude D510 with the mist recent BIOS installed.
> I have win XP factory installed, boots fine.
> I have tried installing the following on a partition:
>
> 5.4 FreeBSD
> 	BTX Halted and goes no further straight after the install option screen,
> ie
> 1 - FreeBSD, 2 - FreeBSD without ACPI
Tried booting without ACPI? I have quite a few machines at work which do
this, mostly old(ish) PII/PIII systems with low-quality motherboards.
> 5.3 FreeBSD
> 	Gets a little further, but drops out on a panic, while trying to load the
> usb devices, I think
>
> 4.11 FreeBSD
> 	Same as 5.3
> 4.10 FreeBSD
> 	Same as 4.10
Try the 6.0 BETA3, it's not too scary, but you will want to recompile your
kernel after you install (assuming it works) to get decent performance
(hint: remove the debugging options). If you haven't done this don't
worry, it isn't complicated and is well covered in the Handbook.

If the USB problem comes back, you can still work around it, although it
may be challenging for someone new to FreeBSD. However, you will learn
quite a bit in the process!

Assuming you have a spare machine lying around, or another FreeBSD box
already, you can compile your own kernel, removing the USB bits and then
modify the ISO image file replacing the stock kernel with your own one.
This isn't actually as hard as it might sound :-) You can mount the ISO
image (using mdconfig and mount_cd9660) then copy your USB-less kernel
over the one on the CD, then burn a copy of the ISO file again and it will
have your own special-purpose install CD (haven't tried this but I think
it will work, the kernel on the CD is not 'special' as far as I know).

If this all sounds far too complex for you, I can probably make you the CD
described above as I have a D510 here (which I'm typing from) although
it's not running FreeBSD and I won't be fully test the install (it's
not
really mine).

Try the simpler options first, and if not, send the list another E-Mail
and see what comes your way.
> I did a google, looked in the handbook, but couldn't find anything that
it
> might be.
>
> Regards,
>
> Brian
>
>
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Cheers,
--
Dominic Marks