On 10/6/2017 10:17, Rostislav Krasny wrote:
Hi there,

I try to install amd64 FreeBSD 11.1 in dual-boot with Windows 7 on an
MBR partitioned disk and I can't make it bootable. My Windows 7 uses
its standard MBR partitioning scheme (1. 100MB System Reserved
Partition; 2 - 127GB disk C partition) and there is about 112GB of
free unallocated disk space that I want to use to install FreeBSD on
it. As an installation media I use the
FreeBSD-11.1-RELEASE-amd64-mini-memstick.img flashed on a USB drive.

During the installation, if I choose to use Guided Partitioning Tool
and automatic partitioning of the free space, I get a pop-up message
that says:

======
The existing partition scheme on this disk
(MBR) is not bootable on this platform. To
install FreeBSD, it must be repartitioned.
This will destroy all data on the disk.
Are you sure you want to proceed?
              [Yes]          [No]
======

If instead of the Guided Partitioning Tool I choose to partition the
disk manually I get a similar message as a warning and the
installation process continues without an error, but the installed
FreeBSD system is not bootable. Installing boot0 manually (boot0cfg
-Bv /dev/ada0) doesn't fix it. The boot0 boot loader is able to boot
Windows but it's unable to start the FreeBSD boot process. It only
prints hash symbols when I press F3 (the FreeBSD slice/MBR partition
number).

I consider this as a critical bug. But maybe there is some workaround
that allows me to install the FreeBSD 11.1 as a second OS without
repartitioning the entire disk?

My hardware is an Intel Core i7 4790 3.6GHz based machine with 16GB
RAM. The ada0 disk is 238GB SanDisk SD8SBAT256G1122 (SSD).

You have to do the partitioning and then install FreeBSD's boot manager by hand.  It /does /work; I ran into the same thing with my Lenovo X220 and was able to manually install it, which works fine to dual-boot between Windows and FreeBSD-11.  I had to do it manually because the installer detected that the X220 was UEFI capable and insisted on GPT-partitioning the disk, which is incompatible with dual-boot and the existing MBR-partitioned Windows installation.

You want the partition layout to look like this:

$ gpart show
=>       63  500118129  ada0  MBR  (238G)
         63    4208967     1  ntfs  (2.0G)
    4209030  307481727     2  ntfs  (147G)
  311690757          3        - free -  (1.5K)
  311690760  165675008     3  freebsd  [active]  (79G)
  477365768     808957        - free -  (395M)
  478174725   21928725     4  ntfs  (10G)
  500103450      14742        - free -  (7.2M)

=>        0  165675008  ada0s3  BSD  (79G)
          0    8388608       1  freebsd-ufs  (4.0G)
    8388608  136314880       2  freebsd-ufs  (65G)
  144703488   20971519       4  freebsd-swap  (10G)
  165675007          1          - free -  (512B)

MBR has only four partitions; the "standard" Windows (7+) install uses /three. /The "boot"/repair area, the main partition and, on most machines, a "recovery" partition.  That usually leaves partition 3 free which is where I stuck FreeBSD.   Note that you must then set up slices on Partition 3 (e.g. root/usr/swap) as usual.


--
Karl Denninger
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
/The Market Ticker/
/[S/MIME encrypted email preferred]/

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