On Sun, 7 Jun 2009, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
Can you give more details on the issue ? I have NetBSD 5.0 running on a DS20 and several XP1000, and don't have issues with it. All are UP though.
Sure, no worries. It's been a while since the last time I tried NetBSD on my 264DP and on my CS20's (with DS20L SRM). I believe 3.1 was the last version I really tested installing though I have tried booting later versions too. With the UP kernel access to the harddrive was extremely slow just as you described. Though the disk was unmounted cleanly the first thing that happened was that the installer said that the disk wasn't unmounted cleanly and the installer continued to do an fsck on it. The fsck totally thrashed the existing contents of the disk... I then did an install to the disk in a 164LX which worked flawlessly and I also compiled a MP version of the kernel before putting the disk back into the CS20. Same problems as before, on the first boot with a MP kernel I got a crash just like the one that was described earlier in this thread. Trying to boot a UP kernel resulted in the same thing as with the installer, fsck thrashed the filesystem on the first boot.
On the 264DP results were a bit different. With the UP kernel the system would run without problems (though without utilizing the full potential of the system). Running with a MP kernel the system was very unstable. Sometimes it would crash at boot time just like the CS20 and other times it would run for days. I could never see a pattern in the crashes except that it usually was a memory management fault just like on the CS20.
I've been using IDE disks hooked up to IDE-SCSI adapters so I have been able to move the disks between the IDE and the SCSI buses. I was unable to see any difference between the two, the results were the same.
One thing I have been able to exclude is hardware error though. The box I still have online has been running the latest version of Tru64 24/7 for the last 2 years without a problem.
I am aware that this description is a bit fuzzy but it is from memory and I havent been trying NetBSD in quite some time now. I do however have a second CS20 that I could use for some more testing when I get back home in a week or two so I can do some more testing if requested.
Cheers, Anders