[FreeBSD] 'BTX Halted...'

[Glaanieboy]

Alright, some of you may know the motherboard of my server died last week, so I went out to find one. Luckily I found a computershop which had a similar board (supporting SD-RAM and AMD T-bird 1GHz) and because I know the people there, they were kind enough to lend me the board for a week, until I decide to buy it.
But that's not the problem. The problem is that I have reinstalled FreeBSD (after first installing Win98 to test everything), which went fine, after the reboot. It now terminates with a lot of numbers and letters and the following error:
BTX halted...
What does that mean? I tried searching google, but all I could find I may have to redownload the ISO, because it's damaged, but that just couldn't be it, because two weeks ago it installed fine from the same disc.

 

[Geffy]

did you do anything like update the kernel sources or rebuild the kernel, anything like that.
Where in the boot/running process do you get this?

 

[Glaanieboy]

I installed FreeBSD from a CD and when the installer asked me to restart, I did and then the error occured. It's just after you have to press enter to load FreeBSD (the screen which I believe is the bootmanager, where you can choose with the F keys what OS you want)

 

[Glaanieboy]

A bit intensive searching brought me to this answer:
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?010201c423f4$fc1910b0$f901a8c0

And it helped! I am happy again. Thanks anyways guys 😀

 

[Glaanieboy]

*bump-o-magic*

OK, now I have a laptop with (virtually) the same problem. I want to make this laptop my future server (I know it sounds silly, I just want to do it, otherwise it's collecting dust and that's a waste) with FreeBSD 5.4 this time. But now it gives the problem upon booting from CD, that's right after you choose what type of install you want (standard, non-ACPI etc), so the above solution doesn't work.

🙁 Help me

 

[sean.ferguson]

i have had issues booting bsd cds on my older laptop here too, cant remember the exact error but i know it didnt get past the kernel loading.

What specs is the laptop?

For reference my laptop was a 600MHz Celeron, with 64MB Ram

 

[Glaanieboy]

i have had issues booting bsd cds on my older laptop here too, cant remember the exact error but i know it didnt get past the kernel loading.

What specs is the laptop?

For reference my laptop was a 600MHz Celeron, with 64MB Ram

Pentium II Mobile 400 MHz
128 MB Ram

Did you resolve the error? If so, how? BTW, I've read around the web for this problem, and one solution said that you have to disable DMA. But 1) I don't want that, because it will be slower then and 2) I can't get in the BIOS (it's a Compaq Armada M700 series, you need a bootfloppy to get in the BIOS).

 

[sean.ferguson]

nope, never resolved it, i just gave up and installed slackware 😛 sorry Glaanie

 

[Glaanieboy]

**** 🙁

 

[X-Istence]

Grab an older ISO, like 5.3 and see if that works, otherwise, go grab the boot floppy from compaq, disable DMA, install the stuff, then reenable it. I highly discourage the use of a Laptop as a server, as FreeBSD is not stable on them at all yet.

 

[X-Istence]

Also, FreeBSD's boatloader on the CD, might not appreciate the fact that Compaq uses part of the HD disk space for the BIOS.

 

[Glaanieboy]

Grab an older ISO, like 5.3 and see if that works, otherwise, go grab the boot floppy from compaq, disable DMA, install the stuff, then reenable it. I highly discourage the use of a Laptop as a server, as FreeBSD is not stable on them at all yet.

Ah, I somehow expected that. But it never hurts to try, right? It was just a plan, because otherwise it's just collecting dust. I'll see if it works, thanks for the tips 😉

 

[Glaanieboy]

Also, FreeBSD's boatloader on the CD, might not appreciate the fact that Compaq uses part of the HD disk space for the BIOS.

I formatted, fdisk'd, Partition Magic'ed the HD over and over again. Also, this disc comes out of a Pentium III Mobile machine, so the BIOS should be entirely different. But I haven't seen any errors, so I don't think this lappy has a HD BIOS.

 

[Geffy]

I have had BTX Halted recently on a dual xeon system, it booted up, started to boot from the CD, then boom BTX Halted, cant get further than that. Installed Fedora instead. When that tried to properly boot boom kernel panic. Windows however runs fine :S

 

[X-Istence]

I have had BTX Halted recently on a dual xeon system, it booted up, started to boot from the CD, then boom BTX Halted, cant get further than that. Installed Fedora instead. When that tried to properly boot boom kernel panic. Windows however runs fine :S

You should really contact the FreeBSD mailling list with more problems like these. It helps them solve the problems, especially if you can get a kernel dump. You have access to such elaborate hardware, whereas most developers do not, give them a hand.