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Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 08:23:45 -0600 (MDT)
From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To: frank@exit.com
Subject: Re: "Invalid partition table" on 10-stable.
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On Wed, 17 Sep 2014, Frank Mayhar wrote:

> Someone please give me a hint of what's going on here.  I just got a
> Dell Precision M6800.  It's not doing UEFI, it's all legacy.  I pulled
> the installed drive and dropped in a Seagate hybrid 1T drive, then tried
> (and tried, and tried, and tried) to install 10-stable on it.  I'm using
> a memstick image, btw.
>
> No matter what I try and no matter whether I use bsdinstall or do the
> gpart stuff by hand, everything goes fine until I try to boot the new
> install when all I get is "Invalid partition table!"  And nothing.

If that is the only thing displayed, it's from the BIOS.  It would 
indicate Dell has done something in the BIOS that expects certain 
partition types in an MBR, and chokes on the PMBR.  Sometimes a BIOS 
update helps.

It's not clear whether this system is UEFI capable.  If it is, there are 
strict rules for GPT or MBR layout.  See
https://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?&t=42781

If the message appears after FreeBSD starts to boot, it's from FreeBSD. 
The RootOnZFS process looks like it could use an update for partition 
alignment and size, but otherwise should work.