On 08 Mar 2013, at 17:43, Doug Hardie <bc...@lafn.org> wrote:
> 
> On 7 March 2013, at 17:00, John Mehr <j...@visi.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On Thu, 7 Mar 2013 14:18:23 -0800 Doug Hardie <bc...@lafn.org> wrote:
>>> On 7 March 2013, at 11:57, Kevin Oberman <rkober...@gmail.com> wrote:
[ ... ]
>>>> Thanks.  Well, I got 9.1 Release installed, but it won't boot from the 
>>>> internal disk.  It doesn't see the disk as bootable.  I installed using 
>>>> the entire disk for FreeBSD. I used the i386 release.  Perhaps I need to 
>>>> switch to the amd64 release?
>>>> I would generally recommend using the amd64 release, but it may not get 
>>>> your system to boot. How is your disk partitioned? GPT? Some BIOSes are 
>>>> broken and assume that a GPT formatted disk is UEFI and will not recognize 
>>>> them if they lack the UEFI boot partition. UEFI boot is a current project 
>>>> that seems likely to reach head in the fairly near future, but it's not 
>>>> possible now.
>>> No idea what the default partitioning is for BSDInstall. However the Mini 
>>> is only EFI or UFEI with some fallbacks although the comments I find in the 
>>> web indicate that different models have different fallbacks.
>>> One comment indicates that an older unit will boot if its MBR partitioning. 
>>>  I don't know if the new installer supports that or not.
>>>> You may be able to tweak your BIOS to get it to work or you may have to 
>>>> install using the traditional partitioning system. The installer defaults 
>>>> to GPT, but can create either.
>>>> I have such a system (ThinkPad T520) and I have two disks... one that came 
>>>> with the system and containing Windows, and my GPT formatted FreeBSD disk. 
>>>> I wrote a FreeBSD BootEasy boot into the MBR of the Windows disk and it 
>>>> CAN boot the GPT disk just fine. Not ideal for most, but it works well for 
>>>> me
>>> Based on a comment I say, waiting till the empty folder icon appears and 
>>> then plugging in the install memstick causes the mini to boot from disk.  
>>> That just downright weird, but it works.  I could live with that, but this 
>>> is an unattended server and would experience some down time if I am not 
>>> there when there is a power failure.
>>> I just found some "instructions" for using MBR with bsdinstall, but given 
>>> there is an effort to create a UEFI boot which I suspect would expect to 
>>> find the GPT boot partition, perhaps I should just go with the memstick 
>>> approach?
>> 
>> Hello,
>> 
>> If you still have a drive with OS X on it, you may have some luck with OS 
>> X's bless command:
>> 
>> https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/man8/bless.8.html
>> 
>> I got a late 2012 mac mini to boot FreeBSD 9.1 (AMD64) from a hard drive 
>> using 'bless' (unfortunately I don't remember the exact command line 
>> parameters I used).  If you're looking to dual boot, the only luck I had 
>> (without resorting to using third party software like rEFIt) was to put the 
>> OS's on different drives and install FreeBSD using MBR on the second drive.
> 
> I have investigated the bless command and nothing I find on google gives me 
> any good ideal on what folder/file to bless.  I am wondering if just using 
> the volume command and ignoring folder and file would work?


When I was setting up FreeBSD (9/amd64) to run on a MacBook Air, I used (from 
within Terminal while booted into an OS X boot image):
    sudo bless --device /dev/disk0s2 --setBoot --legacy

(s2 was the FreeBSD boot slice.)

My notes also claim that the drive needed to have MBR boot code installed first 
(e.g., via fdisk -B ada0 or the gpart equivalent) in order for the blessing to 
work.  This was about a year ago (December 2011), on whatever 
hardware/firmware/OS X were current at the time.


-- Molly
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