Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2014 22:12:55 +0100 (CET) From: Volker Nebel <vnebel@web.de> To: Michael Sinatra <michael@rancid.berkeley.edu>, raitech@gmail.com, nwhitehorn@freebsd.org Cc: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Booting FreeBSD on a Macintosh? Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1401242204220.2257@localhost> In-Reply-To: <52DADFA2.9040303@rancid.berkeley.edu> References: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1401141804450.1273@localhost> <52D6D32A.9010506@rancid.berkeley.edu> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1401152021130.1411@localhost> <52DADFA2.9040303@rancid.berkeley.edu>
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Dear Michael, dear Raimundo, dear Nathan,
thank you for your tips! I waited for release 10 to be publicly announced,
then tried GPT again, taking care that boot code is written, but it does
not work.
I then made the MBR slice with BSD partitions in it following the
example in man gpart. Booting took long but it worked till I got the error
message "can't exec getty '/usr/libexec/getty' for port /dev/ttyv5".
I then tried BSD partitiions directly, as Michael had mentioned, the
"dangerously dedicated" method, simply using the bsdinstaller. Now it
boots quickly and fine. :)
Best regards and thanks again,
Volker
On Sat, 18 Jan 2014, Michael Sinatra wrote:
> On 01/15/14 11:26, Volker Nebel wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, 15 Jan 2014, Michael Sinatra wrote:
>>
>>> On 1/15/14 3:01 AM, Volker Nebel wrote:
>>>> Dear all,
>>>>
>>>> looking for a good a computer I bought a Macmini 6,1 with Intel Core i5
>>>> last summer, then installed Ubuntu (for amd64) on it and now came back
>>>> to FreeBSD (already running on my laptop). Having installed this, the
>>>> macmini does not boot anymore, unfortunately. It only shows a blinking
>>>> question mark in a folder symbol.
>>>> I searched the web for hints and found half a dozen of pages
>>>> describing how to run both, Mac OS and FreeBSD. One page recommanded to
>>>> issue
>>>> "gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gtpboot -i 1 ada0" after the
>>>> installation and before reboot, but this didn't help. I found the hint
>>>> to use FreeBSD for i386 - same result. (And it did boot Ubuntu for
>>>> amd64.) Someone else recommanded to use MBR partitioning scheme instead
>>>> of GPT, but the Partition Editor of the FreeBSD Installer returns "Error
>>>> Invalid Argument" when I try to Create a partition of type freebsd-boot
>>>> and size 64k or 512K.
>>>> Can anybody help? How can I install FreeBSD 9.2 on a Macmini and
>>>> boot?
>>>
>>> Surprisingly, the way I have gotten it to work is to use a good,
>>> old-fashioned BSD-style disklabel. I just installed FreeBSD 10-RC1 on a
>>> Mac Mini, but it was the oldest possible Intel version (a 1,1).
>>>
>>> If you install 9.2 the way you would install 8--use an MBR partition
>>> with BSD disklabel on slice 1, you should get it to boot.
>>>
>>> I am not close to the machine right now, and it's powered off, but I can
>>> fire it up and send you the partition/label parameters.
>>>
>>> Again, this is a very old 1,1 (still, it's an EFI system, but it's only
>>> 32-bit), but the same scheme might work on your system as well.
>>>
>>> michael
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Hi Michael,
>>
>> thank you for the hints! Though I would prefer GTP disk layout because
>> booting with MBR may take longer (Apple first looks for GTP file system,
>> that's what one of the posts said), I wouldn't mind doing so. But as I
>> wrote, I don't get the first slice created. Is type freebsd-boot wrong?
>
> I read that also, but I am not sure it's quite right. At any rate the
> following MBR partition scheme boots just fine on a Mini 1,1:
>
> [kenai] /home/michael# gpart show
> => 63 125045361 ada0 MBR (60G)
> 63 125045298 1 freebsd [active] (60G)
> 125045361 63 - free - (32K)
>
> => 0 125045298 ada0s1 BSD (60G)
> 0 117440512 1 freebsd-ufs (56G)
> 117440512 7604224 2 freebsd-swap (3.6G)
> 125044736 562 - free - (281K)
>
>
> Oddly, if you skip the MBR and just do a BSD disklabel on the device
> (similar to the old "dangerously dedicated" mode), it will still boot
> properly into FreeBSD.
>
> I have yet to find a GPT scheme that will boot from a Mac Mini's EFI (at
> least without something like rEFIt, but even that doesn't always work
> with GPT schemes). I assume that's because the Minis I have are really
> old; however, I have a newer mini (the one I am composing this message
> on--I think it's a 3,1) that also boots with a similar MBR scheme.
>
> The easiest way to install this with the newer bsdinstallers is to
> select "Manual" partitioning and then create an MBR partition with the
> first slice for FreeBSD, and then label that slice with a BSD dislabel,
> in the same way that sysinstall would have done it for 7.x or 8.x.
> After that, it should "just work."
>
> michael
>
>
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