After installation, FreeBSD fails to load.

J

JDD

My apologies in advance if this problem has already been addressed. I looked for threads that echoed my problem but nothing quite fit. (One thread got close, but it soon became too technical for me to understand.)

I recently tried installing FreeBSD on an ancient desktop of mine. I downloaded the appropriate iso (i386) and ran through the install process. After rebooting, I was greeted with a screen that simply said "Failure loading operating system". I thought the drive might have been corrupted so I tried another drive. After that installation I was given a screen that no operating system was found and that the computer was trying to load something (pxm something or other, if I recall. I'll get the details if necessary.)

After that, I installed the OS on another HDD that already had Ubuntu installed. Every time it would load directly into Ubuntu. I updated Grub thinking that that might have something to do with it, but no luck.

So a yesterday I tried to install FreeBSD on a spare laptop that already has Ubuntu, Mint, and Debian. After running through the installation process and rebooting, FreeBSD isn't listed in Grub. I updated Grub accordingly and nothing changed.

Something I gleaned from another thread ( https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/how-to-install-freebsd-dualboot-with-other-os.54746/ ) is that FreeBSD must be the primary (partition?). That's about as much as I understood before things got deep.

Bear in mind that I just escaped Windows about a month ago, so you might have to explain things as you would to a child.

My apologies again if you've already addressed this issue. A million thanks.
 
First, remember that FreeBSD is not Linux. It will not automatically update grub entries, that would have to be done manually.

Which version of FreeBSD did you install on the "ancient desktop"? Was another operating system already present? Were you trying to set it up to multiboot?
 
wblock@ said:
First, remember that FreeBSD is not Linux. It will not automatically update grub entries, that would have to be done manually.

Which version of FreeBSD did you install on the "ancient desktop"? Was another operating system already present? Were you trying to set it up to multiboot?
Click to expand...

On the desktop I tried 10.2 and 9.3. I tried to install with a freshly formatted HDD and along side Ubuntu. I'm not sure about the multiboot, though. Ideally, as with my laptop, I would have been able to choose my OS upon start up.
 
HP, like Lenovo, has some firmware implementations that make exactly the wrong assumptions about GPT. Lenovo has fixed some of theirs, and a BIOS/UEFI upgrade might cure that.

Otherwise, MBR is the only choice.
 
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Well, I think I'm in over my head. I'll do some more research.

Edit

For what it's worth, I used UFS.
 
JDD said:
Bear in mind that I just escaped Windows about a month ago, so you might have to explain things as you would to a child.
Click to expand...
JDD said:
Well, I think I'm in over my head. I'll do some more research.
Click to expand...

Stick with it. I, like you abandoned Windows over a year ago, and today I have no regrets and I ain't looking back. The folks on this forum are awesome. But they are demanding; meaning they will demand info from you. In other words you have to help them help you. But that is where you will do a lot of learning. Have faith, and you will grow.

I'll try to help you, but I have had good success using FreeBSD on older hardware, but maybe yours is really old, or maybe you just have bad luck. I had bad luck with Dell machines and video for example, but on other machines video was good to go. I too use UFS, it works great for what I am doing (home NAS and home desktop machines). Can you take one of those machines and simply blow away everything and dedicate the whole disk to FreeBSD instead of trying multi-boot? You might get up and running faster which will help you learn faster. :)
 
Dear JDD,
if you have spare disks and not much experience with Grub, then using a disk just for FreeBSD saves a lot of headache. UFS should be fine as well. And start with the console stuff first. Approach GUI later, the start with the most simple window manager as TWM to make X working. Everything is really well documented, but it can take a little time to get comfortable with everything.

Have fun and success,
Christoph
 
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Sorry for the long delay.

After trying a fresh install of FreeBSD on my old desktop, I get a screen that mentions the ethernet controller, "client mac addr" and so forth. The screen also says "PXE-E53: no boot filename received" and "PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM." I looked around and found that this message is sometimes displayed when an HDD is no longer operable. However, I just formatted the HDD so I know it's still good.
 
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