illumos gate

James Deagle wrote:

I can't get OpenIndiana (nor Tribblix) to boot from most recent images, either from direct installation or upgrades from older images--in either case, the machine goes straight to a "BTX Halted" message. (I mention Tribblix only to suggest the possibility that it may be an underlying issue with illumos-gate, rather than OI-specific.) On the other hand, I can install and then OI and Tribblix from 2018.10 and m.20 (circa 2017).

The machine in question is a Compaq/HP Presario CQ56, and I assume it's running UEFI at boot. While I've seen messaging regarding illumos-gate not having UEFI support, the fact that I'm able to install and run 2018.10 and m.20 leads me to think there's another issue causing the problem.

Thank you in advance for your time and attention, and for all of the fantastic work you do on this project.

Cheers,
James

PS: In the "Target version" I was unable to see 2020.04, so I selected 2020.10 instead.

BTX halted is from BIOS boot - it may be UEFI CSM, but for all practical purposes, it is BIOS.

However, if you run pkg update, to get the very latest, is it still crashing?

With latest update, if it is crashing, please get screenshot. Also, does it crash immediately, or, if you press space, can you get boot: prompt?

James Deagle wrote:

The other pic, as referenced above.

The USB image is using GPT (maybe not the best choice), and GPT has backup label at the end of the disk, in this case, it is at the end of the USB image. Written to physical device, the partitioning programs will complain about bad backup because it is not found at the end of the disk any more. gparted, if crashing, is just buggy, and this is separate issue entirely.

James Deagle wrote:

Two scenarios:

1) As for my attempt at upgrading to the latest from a successful 2018.10 installation, I did "# pfexec pkg refresh --full", followed by "pfexec pkg image-update -v" (without doing "pkg update" at any point), which led to the "BTX halted" message immediately after the Compaq system splash screen (or whatever it's called). I had pressed all sorts of keys, including the space bar, but nothing happened.

2) I have twice installed OI via the 2020.04 usb image, and got the exact same "BTX halted" message immediately after booting. With the more recent attempt, I tried hitting the space bar, as recommended, but to no avail.

The attached picture shows the exact same data on the screen between all three recent installations/upgrades.

After the most recent installation, I booted the live usb image once again, and ran "# /usr/sbin/gparted &", which generated an error message saying "The backup GPT table is not at the end of the disk, as it should be. This might mean that another operating system believes the disk is smaller. Fix, by moving the backup to the end end (and removing the old backup)?"

I'll attach a pic of the message in a follow-up to this message.

ok, this screenie does help a lot, I have diagnosed this kind of issue already:) I think we have fix as well, just need to test the binaries. This test needs to be performed on your system as I can not replicate the issue myself (or it would be fixed already;)

The immediate issue is that we get division by 0, unfortuantely it does happen in __udivmoddi4(), so we do not know exactly what is calling it.

What disks are in that system - the screenshot does show one, are there any more?

James Deagle wrote:

Sorry for the delayed response--too much life stuff getting in the way the past week.

In any case, I'm not aware of another disk in the system, though there is a 0.5 GB Win95 FAT32 partition, perhaps a remnant of the Windows 10 that came with that laptop. I have included a screenshot of what GParted shows me from the current Hipster live DVD. (I realize I may be the least technical user in this community, so please let me know if this adequately answers your question, or if there's something I'm missing.)

(As you'll see from the screenshot, I'm running Linux on this machine as a stop-gap measure until I can set sail once again with illumos.)

hm, ok yeah, this picture alone does not help us. Was the illumos partition also inside extended partition, like you have linux native now?

Whenever I have installed OpenIndiana (or Tribblix), I have always selected "whole disk", rather than playing around with partitions--as far as I know, there wouldn't have been other partitioning systems at play. (Ditto with having installed OpenBSD on this box as well.)

James Deagle wrote:

Whenever I have installed OpenIndiana (or Tribblix), I have always selected "whole disk", rather than playing around with partitions--as far as I know, there wouldn't have been other partitioning systems at play. (Ditto with having installed OpenBSD on this box as well.)

ok, just to clarify, the btx register dump appears after install/upgrade, not while you run usb image? if so, we would need a small setup on disk to be able to have "good" loader and to test "bad" ones - because none of my own test systems expose that issue...

Generally, there has been no issue running live images, either on DVD or usb. Also, there hasn't been any issue with fresh installs of ~2018 iso images. The only time I get the BTX warning is either from installing the latest available image directly from a usb live image, or else after upgrading to it from a ~2018 image. (This goes for OI as well as Tribblix.)

I'd be more than happy to try out a test setup disk on my machine if it's something you can send or post electronically.

James Deagle wrote:

Generally, there has been no issue running live images, either on DVD or usb. Also, there hasn't been any issue with fresh installs of ~2018 iso images. The only time I get the BTX warning is either from installing the latest available image directly from a usb live image, or else after upgrading to it from a ~2018 image. (This goes for OI as well as Tribblix.)

I'd be more than happy to try out a test setup disk on my machine if it's something you can send or post electronically.

Ok, so, could you set up the system from 2018; so we can test custom loader binaries and identify where the division by zero does happen. You can mail me directly (tsoome@me.com) once you have the setup, then we can start chasing that issue:)

OpenIndiana Hipster 2018.10 is now back up and running on this box, and the email has been sent. :)

I'll be keeping an eye out for the test setup disk, but in the meantime I think I'll go ahead and install Tribblix m20, and then do incremental upgrades from there until I reach the first version number for that distro where the BTX warning starts to rear its head.

I have now determined that Tribblix m20.6 (from March 2019) is the version where the BTX problem first appears. Hope that helps.