Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2017 19:27:17 +0300 From: Rostislav Krasny <rosti.bsd@gmail.com> To: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> Cc: Eugene Grosbein <eugen@grosbein.net>, freebsd-stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Installing amd64 FreeBSD 11.1 in dual-boot with Windows 7 on an MBR partitioned disk Message-ID: <CANt7McFK349gVvZhgED62J9dxZSDW5kw2_mrYs73QcqYBzGU_A@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfpRJg4twPJ34V=6s-MEXnKM-9eHzW3pyb93TyN%2Bg4vfBg@mail.gmail.com> References: <CANt7McGqZG0mJFmuQgE4_rFu_0kmnyUCUCZyrrThKMjJtnyewA@mail.gmail.com> <59D7BE53.5050409@grosbein.net> <CANt7McEUP1MC32zJt0%2BbOi-1A6FFXr-C2D6ibKB5gZKr5xWEyQ@mail.gmail.com> <CANCZdfpRJg4twPJ34V=6s-MEXnKM-9eHzW3pyb93TyN%2Bg4vfBg@mail.gmail.com>
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On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 6:26 PM, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote: > Sorry for top posting. Sounds like your BIOS will read the botox64.efi from > the removable USB drive, but won't from the hard drive. Force BIOS booting > instead of UEFI and it will install correctly. However, it may not boot > Windows, which I think requires UEFI these days. > > The root of the problem is that we have no way to setup the EFI boot > variables in the installer that we need to properly installed under UEFI. > I'm working on that, so you'll need to be patient... > > Warner My computer doesn't have any EFI partition and this explains why the installed FreeBSD boots in the BIOS mode on it. The installation media probably has the EFI partition (with the bootx64.efi) and then BIOS probably boots the installation media in the UEFI mode instead of the BIOS mode. So the "machdep.bootmethod" sysctl doesn't represent the BIOS boot mode configuration but a boot method the currently running system was booted in. If this is true then the "machdep.bootmethod" sysctl should not be used in bsdinstall. At least not for the bootability check. Something else should be used for the bootability check or the bsdinstall should trust the user choice. BTW this is how the EFI partition looks like in someone's Windows 7 disk manager: https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/images/en_US/efi-system-partition.png and this how it looks without any EFI partition in my system (with Windows 7 / FreeBSD dual-boot) http://i68.tinypic.com/9u19b8.png I think even that NTFS System Reserved partition is not mandatory for Windows installation. It just used to keep Windows boot files in a safe, place preventing accidental deletion by a user. It's being created if Windows is installed on an empty disk but if you create just one big NTFS partition prior to the Windows installation and install it on that single partition it will be ok. There will be just more Windows system files on the C disk, for example ntldr, NTDETECT.COM. It can be checked on VM, for example on VirtualBox.
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