From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jul 4 05:44:25 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E42411065670 for ; Mon, 4 Jul 2011 05:44:25 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jrisom@gmail.com) Received: from mail-iy0-f182.google.com (mail-iy0-f182.google.com [209.85.210.182]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B04FD8FC14 for ; Mon, 4 Jul 2011 05:44:25 +0000 (UTC) Received: by iyb11 with SMTP id 11so5637123iyb.13 for ; Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:44:25 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:user-agent:mime-version:to:subject :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=8WXzLLDU/ZcQ3yB0lV9MXhqTRQ0ruDdRqhk3N9uKyuw=; b=ieatO5nTfnyGcYPWM9m798oqVkVRBi4JCclt6nR8/XhrP4F9ATDmUu4yWsaDS8onia OpKHio2P3hHull89Dnb4gaFSSmk94BLcjb+PtQCjULTbCi3hBntzhwJEq351+tw05vgo u3CZXaml5jBTmrHn1SdYPncDkDE6JbtIF8HPI= Received: by 10.42.72.193 with SMTP id p1mr1141214icj.244.1309758264874; Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:44:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.168.1.3] (c-98-212-201-29.hsd1.il.comcast.net [98.212.201.29]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id ft12sm3396301ibb.53.2011.07.03.22.44.23 (version=SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:44:24 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <4E115312.4030504@gmail.com> Date: Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:43:46 -0500 From: Joshua Isom User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110616 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1.11 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Making an mbr boot usb on 8.2-stable X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 04 Jul 2011 05:44:26 -0000 I recently changed my raid0 into two raid1's so I can have redundancy. Getting a disk to boot was harder than I ever remember. Part of the problem, my gigabyte bios locks up hard if there's a gpt usb drive plugged in, not even scanning the memory. It seems to be a little known problem. Some of the stuff I read on the internet mentions fdisk being somewhat broken because of geom changes, and I couldn't get a usb disk to boot that I made with fdisk or gpart. I ended up just dd'ing a memstick image from freebsd.org onto a drive and booting that. Annoyingly, the only one supporting zfs v28 is the 9-current image judging by the timestamps. I'm still wanting a rescue disk, and gpt is out of the question. I don't want a cd because I want a full install and to be able to periodically update it. I can partition the drive, install freebsd on it, but it won't boot. I've tried gpart, fdisk, and sade but I can't seem to be able to make it actually boot or even reach loader. I think the furthest I got was boot1.