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 (Smail #157) id m1fM8RL-0000H5C; Fri, 25 May 2018 10:51:11 +0200
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To: Ed Maste <emaste@freebsd.org>
Cc: Johannes Lundberg <johalun0@gmail.com>,
 FreeBSD Current <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>,
 Andreas Nilsson <andrnils@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Boot USB memstick with MBR (WAS: Re: [RFC] Deprecation and
 removal of the drm2 driver) 
From: Philip Homburg <pch-fbsd-1@u-1.phicoh.com>
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Date: Fri, 25 May 2018 10:51:10 +0200
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>Can you download the image from
>https://people.freebsd.org/~emaste/mini-image.amd64.xz, uncompress and
>write it to a USB stick and try on this system? This is a
>MBR-partitioned dual-mode test image. It's not an installer - it
>should just boot to a login prompt - but can be used to test this
>scheme.

I have bad news and some good news.

The bad news is that with this image the USB stick doesn't get recognized as
a boot device. Same as with the 11.2-BETA2 images.

The good news is that if I completely recreate the MBR, keeping the layout of
the partitions the same, then the USB stick is recognized.

The weird news is that it then proceeds to boot from harddisk. But that may
be an issue with the boot code I put on.

So the issue is limited to the MBR. 

I'll try to figure out what exactly makes the difference.