Lions and tigers and daemons, oh my...

[jsbowden]

So, I upgraded my machine at home back in late August (or was it early September? It was sometime around then...), and over all, I'm very happy with my machine.

I did have to pull my 80GB SATA drive out, but I replaced with another Seagate 250GB SATA2 identical to the one I ordered initially, and everything is fine now. Apparently, mixing SATA2 HDDs and SATA1 optical drives is fine, but I got weird timeouts and hangs with haveing a SATA1 and SATA2 HDD hanging off the same controller...which I found odd since each drive is on its own "chain".

The primary drive in the machine is one of the Seagates (I have a 200GB ATA150 drive in there too), and it's currently partitioned with a ~90GB WinXP partition, ~90GB Vista, and ~50GB unused, which I was planning on installing FreeBSD on.

I say was because I can't get either the latest 6.3 or 7.0 RC/Beta (I forget which branch is currently Release Candidate and which is in Beta, but it's irrelevant) to boot. At least, not with the keyboard and mouse plugged in.

The kernel hangs when probing the USB controller the mouse and keyboard are plugged in to. It doesn't matter which one...I can move them and it'll just hang later when it gets to that controller. Now, I can turn USB keyboard and mouse support in the BIOS off and it'll boot, but then I can't select which OS I'd like to boot and I'll only ever see Vista since I set it to the default in bcdedit.

Something I noticed that Windows XP and Vista both do is send a power down signal to all USB devices before probing the controller, and then later reactivating the USB devices and figuring out what they are. This is not new Windows behavior. Unpatched XP from an original release install disk does this. I suspect that if I put Win2k on that 50GB unused space, it'd probably do the same thing.

This has never been a problem before, but I have to wonder if there's some bit of the USB spec. that's been ignored by the FreeBSD core team since it hasn't mattered until now. As much as I'm loathe to do it, I guess I'll see if RatHed will boot and install on that space.

But damn it, I REALLY would prefer to run FreeBSD...I've been running FreeBSD continually since 1.1.

Comments

[sungo.livejournal.com]

there are other linuxes, you know, besides the evil redhat. :) just saying.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

It really wouldn't matter WHICH flavor of Linux, as I don't particularly like Linux. I'd run RedHat simply because I have a license for it (it came with my certification).

[dlganger.livejournal.com]

Yes, but they all tend to use the same kernels, so if one of the major Linux flavors ends up imitating the same behavior, it's likely they all will.

[sungo.livejournal.com]

from my experience, most of the various linux problems come from user space crap, not the kernel itself. For instance, redhat, debian and gentoo all do initialization and management thereof differently. they manage configs differently. different package systems all around. massively different install processes too. the kernel only matters for a little when it comes to daily life on a linux box. yes, if the network driver or whatever for your system blows, it'll probably blow everywhere . (unless it's a dell. then redhat will probably work better with it.)

[dlganger.livejournal.com]

We're talking about probing and initializing the USB chain. That's almost definitely kernelspace.

[carpone.livejournal.com]

Desktop Linux: Ubuntu > RedHat.

My flavor of *nix at home: OS X.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

That would require buying a Mac. As nice as they are from a hardware design standpoint (I don't know who at Apple does their internals, but those machines are as clean on the inside (design wise) as they are on the outside...the inside of my G5 aluminum trash can is gorgeous), they are expensive. Yes, an equivalent PC would be just as expensive, but I don't like the iMacs and the aluminum trash cans, while smoking machines, are far more machine than I need at home.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Equivalent non-Mac laptops usually come in at about a $1000 cheaper, these days - assuming you want a real warranty and the basic software required to make it more than a pretty paperweight.

Mac laptops are horrendously overpriced. I can't imagine their desktops being much better.

[kjn]

Given that the basic MacBook starts at $1099, that's impressive.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

#1: I've never seen such a beast. Everyone goes right for the Macbook Pro.

#2: And you can get equivalent specs and performance from a $600 laptop with Windows or Ubuntu - and which, unlike your $1200 Mac, has a worthwhile hardware warranty and some useful productivity apps.

[artzgirl1987.livejournal.com]

Yeah... you might as well be speaking ancient greek. haha.