FreeBSD problems

[dolemite]

I've been having a problem with installation of FreeBSD 4.4-Stable
on my i386 platform. I've downloaded the isos from FreeBSD and checked the MD5 sums. I've been looking through hundreds of web sites and such.Most of the web pages I've found were nothing more than dmesgs.

Upon installation it hangs on this line everytime:
plip0: <PLIP virtual consoles, on ppbus0>
This is the network or parallel printer port. (I think) I don't have a printer hooked up.
I've tried disabling all network stuff in full screen kernel config and still no luck.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, cause I don't want to go back to SuSE.

[linuxcomando]

Your are right it is actually a printer port....my guess is that its hangging on the hardware prob....and that means that it cant find/support that particular hard ware....so here is what i purpose...disable the offensive hardware and if that doesent work i would tell you to download openBSD ...its by far better than freeBSD...well in my opinon.......i let you know if i find out anything else

[dolemite]

Wow, somebody really does read these *nix forums, hehe!
I've been searching and searching and found several answers.
Here's a few, I can't find the others to quote from:

From the dBforums: http://dbforums.com/showthread.php?s...651#post829651

"I really dont know if this is related to your problem, but some time ago i have read
about a similar situation where the solution was to change BIOS settings on 'assign
IRQ to USB'. As far as I remember, this should be set to 'enabled' even if you dont
have USB-devices attached."

And another from deep in the FreeBSD mailing archives:http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.c...ebsd-questions


"Tim, I ran into this problem when installing 4.2 onto
my laptop. (4.1.1 installed fine.) It turned out to
be some kind of resource/irq conflict. I found that
disabling the plip and some parallel port device
interfaces in the pre-installation kernel
configuration took care of the problem. You may have
to selectively disable other devices, your mileage may
vary."


I've found some more articles and discussions but can't find them now. I have come to the conclusion it's got to be a hardware conflict with Irq #'s and it's timing out while probing them. I have yet to try any of these yet. I've been waiting to get MS 2k pro installed before I try and reinstall FreeBSD. If all else fails I'll probably go to OpenBSD. I really thought about it using OpenBSD and don't remember why I didn't. I should have How could I have denied that kind of security. lol

Welp, I'm probably going to try this today or tomorrow so ill post what happens then.

[linuxcomando]

Cool.....well letr me know how it goes

[unNamed-Player]

Hi dolemite, believe it or not I have been wanting to post a reply to your post for a couple of days now.

Ok, plip0 is one of those BSD Unix features that Linux does not really have anymore. It is a parallel port communication device. In other words you could connect a series of BSD boxen together via parallel cables and they could talk to each other over the plip interface. There is also slip which is a similar device but runs over serial.

More in line with your question is your install problems. Follow the advice of the postings that you found. If that fails, consider getting the 4.3 release iso and installing that. FreeBSD has one incredibly powerfull tool called `cvsup' that will allow you to rebuild the entire system to the latest stable snapshot. http://www.freebsddiary.org and http://www.bsdvault.net have good instructions for doing this. Once built to that latest stable whenever you install a package from /stand/sysinstall or the ports collection, it will be the latest approved package for FreeBSD.

Anyway, I hope this helped, and if you have any other questions be sure and ask. FreeBSD rocks and I am sure you will like it. Very steep learning curve, even makes Slackware look user firendly, but it is worth the trouble.

[UberC0der]

Hi dolemite,

I have had problems with the 4.4 release iso myself, there is something going on with it imho. I resolved the issue by installing 4.2 RELEASE on my box and then doing a `cvsup' , rebuilt the kernel, and then did a make world. After a reboot I am doing fine.

This puts me at 4.4 RELEASE, and I am patiently waiting for 4.4 STABLE.

If you can find OpenBSD go ahead and give it a try, I believe that 3.0 is out and has increased number of packages over previous releases.

FreeBSD is not as secure as OpenBSD right out of the box, but it has an absolutely huge number of packages. Just about anything that I would ever want to use on Linux has a FreeBSD port ready to build in the ports tree.

In many ways I like BSD better than Linux, I use Linux mostly for the ability to play modern games like Quake 3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Other than that from Quake2 back to the earlier Id games like Wolf3D and Doom, are all played on my FreeBSD box.

Anyway, I hope you figure it out, and if you need help this is just one of many places you could ask.

Merry Chrsitmas.

[dolemite]

Thanks for all the help!
I finally got around to try installing with 4.2, haven't tried 4.3 yet.
I can get past the dmesgs where it hangs at plip0..., but now I've got another problem. When I get to the screen where it start the installation and what type of installation; I'm stuck.
My keyboard and mouse won't respond to anything, so I have to hard boot and try again. I've got the 101/102 standard keyboard, but it's USB.
I don't have a serial port for an old keyboard only PS2 port. I've been looking around for an USB to PS2 converter without any luck.
What to do?

[UberC0der]

Hi dolemite,

For now, go into the bios and disable your parallel port, or at least set it to `bidirectional'. Also, make sure that your BIOS is set to Plug N' Play OFF or NO.

As for the keyboard, you can try to install after doing these things in the BIOS, if it does not work, try a PS/2 keybaord for now. Later you can rebuild the kernel with some options that will help you use USB a little better.

Hope this helps.

[dolemite]

Finally got FreeBSD 4.3 installed!
Lots of google'n and config'n and 17 hours later, I'm stuck here

is with this: getting my USB keyboard and mouse to work!
Here's what I've been messing with and how've I got it configured:

/etc/rc.conf
usbd_enable="YES"
moused_enable="YES"
moused_flags="/dev/ums0"

/boot.conf
-D

/boot/loader.conf
usb_load="YES"
ums_load="YES"

/dev/mouse linked to /dev/ttyp0

In my bios
Legacy: Off/Disabled

No PNP option in bios to disable. Would upgrade the bios myself, but I'm afraid too it's surface mounted.

The GENERIC kernel has USB there and enabled.

I've tried numerous variations of the above configs.

The USB keyboard works only half way; caps/numlock work, but no other keys will.
Both USB devices are run through an OHIC TI controller.

USB keyboard hooked through OHIC controller, USB mouse plugged into keyboard.

That's all the info I can think of right now.
/me goes for a quick power nap

[dolemite]

I've been trying to get my dmesg on here, but can't seem to figure it out. I've tried copying the log dmesgs to a floppy and copyit to this computer since i don't have my ethernet setup.

I did notice this in my dmesgs:
uhci1: <VIA 83c572 USB contollers> port 0xfce0-ovfeff irq 0 at device 4.3m pci0
uhci1: invalid irq 0
uhci1: Please switch on USB support & switch PNP-OS to on in "BIOS"

From what I've copied from my computer shows me having an OHCI on irq 11

I don't have PNP-OS option nor USB support in BIOS only Legacy.

What gives?

Why is it showing up as having an UHCI?

How can I fix this?