DragonFlyBSD 5.6.2 installation failures

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

I've been running about 20 different DragonFlyBSD releases from 3.x to
5.6 on VMs (VMware workstation, VMware/ESX, VirtManager QEMU/KVM, and
OVirt) without any serious difficulties.

Today, I decided to try installation of 5.6.2 on my new workstation, a
Dell Precision 7920 (1 16-core CPU, 32 hyperthreads, 2200MHz Intel
Xeon Platinum 8253, 32GB DDR-4 RAM).

That system has 8 externally-accessible disk drives, and I'm using it
as a test bed for O/S installations, with recent Fedora, FreeBSD,
Microsoft Windows, NetBSD, OS108, TrueOS, and Ubuntu releases in place
and working normally.

Solaris 11.4 installs, but then fails at boot time with an infinite
loop that is probing for USB devices.  Until today, that was the only
O/S that has failed to produce a working installation on my Dell box.

This morning, I made a copy of a 4-day old ISO image for DragonFlyBSD
5.6.2 on a new KOOTION 64GB USB-3 drive and attempted to install it.
The boot proceeded normally for some time, but finally reached a point
in text mode on the console that looks like this (typed by hand):

	...
	CAM: Configuring 1 busses
	CAM: finished configuring all busses
	Device Mapper version 4.16.0 loaded
	dm_target_error: Successfully initialized
	dm_target_zero:  Successfully initialized
	no disk named 'part-by-label/DragonFly_v5.7.0.1310.g63d3b.a
	setrootbyname failed
	ffs_mountroot: can't find rootvp
	Root mount failed: 6

	Manual root filesystem specification:
	  <fstype>:<device>	Specify root (e.g. ufs:da0s1a)
	  ?			List valid disk boot devices
	  panic			Just panic
	  abort			Abort manual input

At that point, no further keyboard input is possible, and Ctl-Alt-Del
does not reboot the system.  A power cycle is necessary.

I also attempted a boot from the recovery mode menu item: it hangs the
same way.  The same hang happens with a "without AHCI" and with a
"without ACPI" menu item boot choice, and with both legacy boot, and
UEFI boot.

On the Dell system, I've removed all but the USB drive and one disk:
in the disk bay, I've tried an old Hitachi 5K750-500 500GB SSD, and a
brand new never-written-to Crucial MX500 1 TB SSD.

I then tried a 5.6.2 ISO image from 1-Jan-2020, and copied it onto a
Kingston USB: same behavior.

Then I tried last night's *.img file, copying it onto a Crucial USB
with a command like this on another box running Ubuntu 19.10:
	
	% dd bs=4M if=DragonFly-x86_64-LATEST-IMG.img of=/dev/sdc conv=fdatasync status=progress

Again I got the same behavior on a boot.

I then tried the three USB drives on an Intel NUC with a M.2 NVMe
drive, and an old Lenovo all-in-one desktop.

On the NUC, the *.img file reaches the installer/root prompt, but on
login as root, "camcontrol devlist" shows only the USB drive.  I
suspected that the M.2 disk might be a problem, and it is.

On the Lenovo, "camcontrol devlist" shows the USB drive and the normal
disk, so an install might be possible. I did not do so, because it
already has a working O/S on it that I didn't want to destroy.

The fact that booting from three different USB drives, three different
DragonFly snapshots in two different formats (*.iso and *.img), and
two different target SSDs, all behave the same way suggests that the
failures are NOT due to boot media errors or installation target media
errors.

Has any list member seen the hang that I describe, and if so, does
anyone have some idea of how I might reach an DragonFlyBSD installer
prompt on my Dell Precision 7920?

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- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe at math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe at acm.org  beebe at computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
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