Hi !

Werner Backes <werner@bit-1.de> schrieb am 16.01.2002, 00:20:14:
> I also had problems with disk geometry. Not such weird values as you
> get,
> my geometry look preety good, but I got problems later during
> installation.
> I cannot remember exactly what was wrong, but I could fix the problem by
> writing a disklabel using an OpenBSD bootdisk. OpenBSD's disklabel has
> an
> option to read the disk's geometry and to write a label based on this 
> information (type "g d" in disklabel's interactive mode to get the disk
> geomery) The values I got from this were a bit different from the values 
> NetBSD reported during boot and also different from the ones I found
> somewhere
> on the net for this disk. Based on this disk label I could partition an
> install
> using the NetBSD bootdisk. I'm not shure if this will fix your problem
> but may-
> be it's worth a try.

Can't help. I tested a bit further yesterday. NetBSD is unable do read
mode page 4 (rigid disk geometry), and therefor doesn't get the
geometry. I directly accesses the disk (tar cf /dev/sd0c /usr) and tried
this, but reading back is very unreliable. I think, there is some kind
of timing problem. It negotiates 10MHz synchronous mode, maybe this is
too much for the disk. I wanted to debug this, added some things to the
driver source, but the kernel build also faills. Maybe i should use this
machine as a door stopper :)

> > The second: using serial console is impossible... Output to the terminal
> > works, input just doesn't work. 
> 
> Do you mean SRM console or NetBSD console? If SRM doesn't work via
> serial
> console, then it's likely that your serial port is broken. When it comes 
> to NetBSD, there are know problems with serial port on Multias with
> NetBSD 
> 1.5. See "http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-alpha/2000/12/03/0007.html"
> for details & fixes. I didn't try this patches but they look good. Btw.:
> Have this problems been fixed in later versions ob NetBSD? My multia
> shows
> a least two of the problems (X server not working, serial ports not
> working)
> with NetBSD 1.5.2.

The problem is different. Serial console (SRM... NetBSD just doesn't
work with ARC) works... as long as i am in the PROM. But in late init
process, suddenly the serial port seems to be shut down :) I saw some
message just stopping while printing (when rc.conf is enable), and then,
no further input/output works. Didn't check it out further, it was late
yesterday, and the problems with Multias don't seem to come to an end...
Another funny thing i saw: If booting with graphic console, the disk
geometry is faked to 264 GB. If booting serial, it is about 40 GB. There
are lots of mystic things in 1.5.2 on Multia i think.

But as my firewall crashed this night due to a hardware fault (the
Multia was intended to replace it), i have a bit different problems to
solve tonight...

Bye... Michael