Boot USB memstick with MBR (WAS: Re: [RFC] Deprecation and removal

[Rodney W. Grimes]

I tried both FreeBSD-11.2-BETA2-amd64-bootonly.iso.xz and
FreeBSD-11.2-BETA2-amd64-mini-memstick.img.xz on a Dell PowerEdge 2950
BIOS version 2.7.0. With both images, the USB stick is not recognized.

Can you download the image from
https://people.freebsd.org/~emaste/mini-image.amd64.xz, uncompress and
write it to a USB stick and try on this system? This is a
MBR-partitioned dual-mode test image. It's not an installer - it
should just boot to a login prompt - but can be used to test this
scheme.

Ed,
I tested this here on my R710 that was failing to boot in
Bios mode with the amd64-11.2-Beta2 disc1.iso, your
mini-image boots fine in either Bios or UEFI mode
on my Dell R710, so what ever you did fixed at
least my one data point.

[Rodney W. Grimes]

I have bad news and some good news.
The bad news is that with this image the USB stick doesn't get recognized as
a boot device. Same as with the 11.2-BETA2 images.

At least it's not a regression.

The good news is that if I completely recreate the MBR, keeping the layout of
the partitions the same, then the USB stick is recognized.

Strange. Can you try an updated test image of mine
(https://people.freebsd.org/~emaste/mini-image-2018-05-28.xz) or this
week's -CURRENT snapshot?

What version(s) of the snapshots sould be tested?
disc1.iso? dvd1.iso? memstick?