Re: boot2 can't boot from USB?
On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 05:30:45PM -0400, Craig Rodrigues wrote: On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 11:16:16AM +0100, Fluffles wrote: If so, i may have found some bugs / problems with boot2. Long ago i tried to make a bootable USB pendrive with FreeBSD 6.1 on it. It failed to boot with the message invalid slice and i got a prompt like: I have worked a lot with getting FreeBSD to boot off of USB devices, and have gotten it to work. Specifically, I have worked with USB pen drives, and USB CD-ROM drives. It *is* possible, but what I have found is the following: - on some motherboards, you need to explicitly configure the BIOS to boot off of a USB device (either a disk, a CD-ROM, or a Zip drive) - booting off of USB-CDROM devices seems to be much more reliable than booting off of USB pen drives - if you have an older motherboard BIOS, say from about 3-4 years ago, booting off of USB devices is more unreliable, than a newer motherboard BIOS - if I have 5 different models of USB pen drives, each model may behave differently, and may or may not boot. Same for USB CD-ROM drives, but I've found CD-ROM drives to be more reliable than pen drives. So to summarize: - booting off of USB devices seems to be sensitive to your motherboard BIOS, and the firmware written into your USB device. - booting off of USB CD-ROM drives seems to be more reliable than booting off of USB pen drives Just to add to your list, I have been successful booting from a USB floppy drive. I don't remember the floppy drive make, but I have used it on both a Dell Optiplex and a IBM (Lenova) laptop. jerry There is no logic to this, I've just found this out from trial and error, and banging my head a lot. -- Craig Rodrigues [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-bugs To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: boot2 can't boot from USB?
Fluffles [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry if this is offtopic. Am i right to assume that: - boot0 and boot1 both read from the disk via BIOS - boot2 tries to read from the disk directly, without BIOS ? No, only the kernel contains drivers that are independent from the BIOS. Everything else (the boot* blocks and /boot/loader) use BIOS calls. If so, i may have found some bugs / problems with boot2. Long ago i tried to make a bootable USB pendrive with FreeBSD 6.1 on it. It failed to boot with the message invalid slice and i got a prompt like: FreeBSD/i386 BOOT Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/loader boot: Whatever i tried, it fails to load Loader or the kernel. Later, i tried FreeNAS which enables the user to write an image to an USB pendrive which contains a bootable FreeNAS installation. The copying went ok, but i got the same boot problem. I then tried it on three different systems with two different USB pendrives and they all had the same problem. All of the systems supported USB boot, and it does actually boot from USB how else could i see that FreeBSD boot prompt? Some systems are brand new: dualcore SLI motherboards, etc. It appears to me the boot2 program fails to read from USB. boot0 and boot1 appear not to have this problem since it uses the BIOS to read from the disk. Is this correct? No, see above, they all use the BIOS. The difference is that boot2 needs to understand UFS, locate the correct slice and partition with /boot/loader in it and load it. The earlier boot blocks are relatively dumb and only know how to load boot2 from a fixed location on the media. So, if boot2 doesn't work for you, it's probably unable to locate your FreeBSD slice and/or partition. How did you create them? (Another difference is that boot2 enters protected mode in order to be able to access memory above 1 MB, while the earlier boot blocks use pure real mode. But that should not be related to the problem that you see.) Are USB boot problems by boot2 known, should i file a PR? boot2 doesn't know about USB at all. It only knows about BIOS-accessible drives (which may include USB drives if that's enabled in the BIOS setup). Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M. Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606, Geschäftsfuehrung: secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün- chen, HRB 125758, Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead. -- RFC 1925 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: boot2 can't boot from USB?
On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 11:16:16AM +0100, Fluffles wrote: If so, i may have found some bugs / problems with boot2. Long ago i tried to make a bootable USB pendrive with FreeBSD 6.1 on it. It failed to boot with the message invalid slice and i got a prompt like: I have worked a lot with getting FreeBSD to boot off of USB devices, and have gotten it to work. Specifically, I have worked with USB pen drives, and USB CD-ROM drives. It *is* possible, but what I have found is the following: - on some motherboards, you need to explicitly configure the BIOS to boot off of a USB device (either a disk, a CD-ROM, or a Zip drive) - booting off of USB-CDROM devices seems to be much more reliable than booting off of USB pen drives - if you have an older motherboard BIOS, say from about 3-4 years ago, booting off of USB devices is more unreliable, than a newer motherboard BIOS - if I have 5 different models of USB pen drives, each model may behave differently, and may or may not boot. Same for USB CD-ROM drives, but I've found CD-ROM drives to be more reliable than pen drives. So to summarize: - booting off of USB devices seems to be sensitive to your motherboard BIOS, and the firmware written into your USB device. - booting off of USB CD-ROM drives seems to be more reliable than booting off of USB pen drives There is no logic to this, I've just found this out from trial and error, and banging my head a lot. -- Craig Rodrigues [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
