Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2015 14:56:14 -0453.75 From: "William A. Mahaffey III" <wam@hiwaay.net> Cc: FreeBSD Questions !!!! <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: The saga continues Message-ID: <56142614.4080406@hiwaay.net> In-Reply-To: <20151006212741.0e128a23.freebsd@edvax.de> References: <5613CA68.6090909@hiwaay.net> <20151006212741.0e128a23.freebsd@edvax.de>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 10/06/15 14:33, Polytropon wrote: > On Tue, 6 Oct 2015 08:25:06 -0453.75, William A. Mahaffey III wrote: >> When I went to reboot, the UEFI 'BIOS' reported >> 'missing MBR record' & hung there. > Do you have "MBR legacy boot" enabled or forced? When using GPT > volumes, one of them has to be a "boot partition". Here you can > find a good illustration of the steps involved: > > http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html#_the_new_standard_gpt > > By the way, it's more like either "BIOS" _or_ "UEFI". ;-) Hence my quotes, it is definitely UEFI, I just call it a BIOS out of old habits :-/ .... > > >> There were/are *no* explicit options >> to boot from a USB drive, although that worked during the install w/ >> virgin HDD's, it came up w/ a very DOS-y screen which listed 'FreeBSD' >> as a boot option. > That depends on the boot order specified in the UEFI. When > a "higher priority" media was found bootable, no other media > will be tried. Check in the UEFI setup if you can change the > boot order, for example to "USB, optical, HDD". *No* options for ordering in this implementation, however, I did eventually find that hitting 'F9' during boot brought up a little dialog which *did* include the USB drive as an option. I hit that & was off & running .... into my next set of issues :-/ .... stay tuned .... > > When the disks are empty, a boot attempt won't work, so the > UEFI decides to look at other possible boot sources, such as > USB sticks or optical media. This step will not be taken when > the HDD is "first priority" and is bootable. > > > >> Is there >> some magic combo of key-strokes to get it to try to boot from the USB >> stick anyway ? > Depends. If I remember correctly, PF12 during POST (or what it > is called like in UEFI) will show a screen to select the boot > source. Of course - only if the UEFI manufacturer has implemented > this interactive selection. F9 in my case .... > > >> I want to boot into a shell & zap the 1st 1 GB or so of >> each drive & try again, a procedure I had to use early this summer >> during a NetBSD install, which *did* work AOK & allowed me to complete a >> successful install. > A few kB usually are enough - just kill the partition table and > the boot loader, located at the beginning of the disk. It will > then appear as "empty". :-) Actually my setup-script 'gpart destroy -F's ada[0,1] as its 1st step before slicing up the drives, so I am back in bidness .... Thanks :-) .... -- William A. Mahaffey III ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "The M1 Garand is without doubt the finest implement of war ever devised by man." -- Gen. George S. Patton Jr.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?56142614.4080406>