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

[Johannes Lundberg]

It's not that hard create a mbr based usb-stick. Far easier than to find a
CD burner.

'Not hard' means
- undocumented. Or at least, if you start with release notes and install
instructions you won't find it.
- Probably only works if you already have a FreeBSD system.
And if it is indeed 'not hard', why not just generate such an image as
part
of the release build?

As someone who burn memsticks weekly and don't own a cd r/w, I agree.
It seems there's no way to download an .iso or .img image that will boot
from usb on legacy bios. This is bad and should be fixed.

We shouldn't expect people that want to experiment with FreeBSD on non-UEFI
hardware to already have a FreeBSD installation where they can prepare boot
media... They shouldn't have to.

File a bug report in bugzilla and try to poke the right people (I don't
know who is working in this area).
I guess the options are, either we make a hybrid .img that'll boot off both
(maybe not that easy if it requires changes to boot assembly code) or just
add a -legacy-bios.img to the image generation scripts.

This is important since it's about lowering the threshold of bringing
people to FreeBSD and giving a good (i.e. working) first impression.

I believe boot/loader.conf is something you have to create, it is not

there

by default.

That's not the problem. The problem is that it lives on a separate zpool
that
is lost at every reboot.
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[Ed Maste]

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.

[Johannes Lundberg]

Post by Ed Maste

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.

Tested successfully on Dell Latitude E7450 for both legacy BIOS and UEFI
boot mode.

[Philip Homburg]

Post by Ed Maste
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.

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.

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.

The weird news is that it then proceeds to boot from harddisk. But that may
be an issue with the boot code I put on.

So the issue is limited to the MBR.

I'll try to figure out what exactly makes the difference.

[Ed Maste]

Post by Philip Homburg
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.

Post by Philip Homburg
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?

[Glen Barber]

Post by Ed Maste

Post by Philip Homburg
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.

Post by Philip Homburg
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?

The *memstick.img for amd64, from this week. (20180529 r334337)

https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-snapshots/2018-May/000411.html

Glen

[Philip Homburg]

Post by Ed Maste
Strange. Can you try an updated test image of mine
(https://people.freebsd.org/~emaste/mini-image-2018-05-28.xz)

That gives a 404.

I have the strong suspision that your previous image doesn't get recognized as
bootable because the C/H/S values are not filled in.

[Ed Maste]

Post by Ed Maste
Strange. Can you try an updated test image of mine
(https://people.freebsd.org/~emaste/mini-image-2018-05-28.xz)

Oops - that should have been
https://people.freebsd.org/~emaste/mini-image-2018-05-28-amd64.xz

But the most recent snapshot images have been built the same way now:
https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/snapshots/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/12.0/FreeBSD-12.0-CURRENT-amd64-20180529-r334337-mini-memstick.img
https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/snapshots/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/12.0/FreeBSD-12.0-CURRENT-amd64-20180529-r334337-memstick.img