boot hang at SMP: AP CPU £1 Launched > noob + new h/w = bad combo?

[sdw333]

Booting from mobo USB header (+micro stick) hangs just after / at:
SMP: AP CPU £1 Launched!

FreeNAS version and platform:
- FreeNAS-8.2.0-RELEASE-p1-x64.img
- burnt on to a USB microthumb using "dd" on MacOSX

General hardware information (CPU, RAM, Motherboard model, etc.):
- CPU: Intel Celeron C530 dual core 2.4 GHz
- RAM: 16 GB = 4 x 4 GB of Kingston DDR3 dual channel (checked mobo compatibility)
- Mobo: Asus P8B75-M (not V, not LE, not LX, not LX plus)
- Boot: A (cheap?) USB 2 IDC 9 pin header to... 2 x USB 2.0... i.e. I mean I am booting from a micro-board with a 9 pin header female plug + 2 x USB 2) in to which is plugged a physically very small thumb drive (badged from Vodaphone) micro USB stick which reports as 15.9 GB (a really small USB thing that can't be called a stick)

Specific hardware information (Network card chipset, Raid controller chipset, etc.):
- NIC is on board: Realtek® 8111F-VB-CG PCIe Gigabit LAN controller
- No h/w RAID.
- Mobo chipset is: Intel B75
- 1 x SATA 6 Gb/s port has Samsung 830 SSD 64 GB
- 5 x SATA 3 Gb/s ports - but only first two occupied by Hitachi Ultrastar 1 TB, 7200 rpm (from Nov 2010).

DMESG output or copy of specific error message:
- Apologies, but ?

IFCONFIG output if you are asking about a NIC or networking problem:
- Doesn't get that far.

PCICONF -lv output if you are asking about MotherBoard and / or PCI card problems:
- Again, doesn't get that far.

Code snippets, logs, config files and quotes should be enclosed in the appropriate bbcode tags:
- Nothing custom.


Apologies, but: noob + new h/w (never used for anything else) + new O/S


Wouldn't boot, so...
I searched the web... then I ensured that ACPI was already disabled for the SATA drives (i.e. they are are in IDE mode)...
...so I tried disabling APM in mobo BIOS...
...but still hangs at same place.


Should I install a.n.other O/S first to just see if all h/w is detected correctly? Maybe Windows?

 

[sdw333]

Have since tried disabling USB 3.0 support in the BIOS.
Still hangs same place.

 

[sdw333]

Have also tried booting from an 8 GB USB stick, on same header jumper micros board, and this USB stick is known to be able to boot O/S installers for SuseEL. But this also hangs for me at same place.

 

[sdw333]

Apologies, I should perhaps have made it clear that I'm looking for some help, almost any help. I think the next stage of the boot is to mount the root file system. But I've no idea why it doesn't, nor how to debug why it doesn't. Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[StephenFry]

sdw333, sorry to hear about your frustrating problem. I think the reason you've not yet gotten any kind of reply is that no one has a clue. I certainly don't, but I'm still a noob.

I would first attempt to boot from as many live-CDs as possible, to see if the machine is viable. Try Ubuntu, FreeNAS, NAS4free, ZFSguru, whatever you can find. There are also (not-quite-legal, I suspect) liveCD versions of complete Windows XP installations around that should give you a good idea if the hardware is problematic.

That's where I would start...

 

[cyberjock]

I'd try installing FreeNAS to the SSD temporarily to see if it boots. If it does it could indicate that the motherboard doesn't boot from USB correctly. If it doesn't fix it I'd disconnect all the hard disks and any other hardware you can and try a bare system bootup. I'd also disable everything in the BIOS that you can. If it boots up fine started enabling things again 1 by 1 and then start adding hardware one by one.

If with everything disconnected/disabled it still won't work then your motherboard just might not be compatible. Check for BIOS updates. If none of those work you might just be screwed :(

 

[survive]

Hi sdw333,

Personally I would use the CD installer (head out to the nearest office supply place & get a 3 pack of CDRW's if you don't have any black CD's). Burn the .iso to one of those, boot it in the MAC & install to your USB key. When the installer prompts you to reboot just shutdown & move the key over to your FreeNAS box.

-Will

 

[sdw333]

Thanks peeps - some good pointers there.

Did a temp install on Win 7 Pro 64 bit. All h/w is fine.

Back to FreeNAS 8.2 ...

...I hadn't flashed latest BIOS - now done.
Didn't help.
Then tried boot from CD to install on to USB stick when plugged in to external port at back of case.
Boots fine.
Put same stick same contents on internal USB header, boot hangs at same place which I think is at the point of attempting some additional mounts of O/S file systems.
Anyway, plug same stick same contents back in back of case and it boots fine.

Then stuck against lack of LAN driver support for Realtek RTL8111F on board NIC. Apparently support is built in from FreeBSD 8.3 onwards. So tried the beta of FreeNAS 8.3 but this didn't quite manage to DHCP configure the NIC, so had to do that manually, but then it would only see 4 of the 5 hard drives - I think it couldn't see the Samsung SSD on the 6 Gb/s SATA-3 port.