Solved Boot freebsd from usb

vince66

vince66

Hello guys,
Can you tell me how to boot FreeBSD from USB external HD ?
No MS-DOS formatted.
Thanks very much.
 
Google for escher and use that as it will correctly arrange the boot sector of the thumb drive and you're bios should either use the escape,F12 or or one of the other function keys.
 
Installing to a USB hard Drive is no different than a regular install.
The one problem is if you use the memstick installer.
Here is the problem. Installer runs and you install onto /dev/da1, because your memstick installer is /dev/da0.

Now when installation is done you remove your memstick installer.
But now the disk you installed onto is now da0, not da1.

So installing onto a USB device from a USB memstick installer requires an extra step.

When FreeBSD is done installing it allows you to drop to a post install shell.
Do this and modify your /etc/fstab with the correct drive designation.(ie. change from /dev/da1 to /dev/da0)
 
Phishfry said:
Installing to a USB hard Drive is no different than a regular install.
Click to expand...


SCENARIO - What I have.
PC architectures with Intel or AMD x86-64 (running Windows Operating Systems), Server architectures (running Windows and Windows-like Server Operating Systems), Apple PC architectures (running macOS Operating Systems).


THE GOAL.
The aim is to boot the above mentioned architectures from the FreeBSD 11.1 installed on an external USB Hard Disk.

The external hard dirsk must not be formatted with any filesystems of the above mentioned operating systems (FAT / NTFS / HFSplus), but simply with the native available filesystem which FreeBSD 11.1 comes distributed with.

I also need to install (and periodically update) some user packages on the external hard disk (from the freebsd ports).


THE QUESTIONS.
1 - On my FreeBSD workstations, I've installed the FreeBSD-11.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso package from the DVD reader.
Can I do the same for the external Hard Disk ?

2 - The release FreeBSD 11.1 includes the FAT filesystem driver. How can I uninstall it ?

Thanks very much in advance.
 
For #2 there is no simple uninstall. The best hope there would be to compile a custom kernel with FAT not enabled.
That is, if it is a kernconf option. I will take a look.
 
For installing to the USB Hard Disk you might want to use Disk Labeling or UFSID on the disk during setup.
That way USB Hard Disk does not depend on /dev/da* in the /etc/fstab

FreeBSD works sequentially. First USB Disk=da0, second USB disk=da1, third USB disk=da2
So it can become confusing without disk labels. Either GPT or MBR has a labeling method.
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/geom-glabel.html
 
Phishfry said:
I will take a look.
Click to expand...
Hello Phishfry !!

I asked if it was possible uninstal the FAT, but I had thought that it could be an option depending on the kernel configuration file.

Oh my God !!! ... OK ... I'll ty to change the KERNCONF file and compile a new custom kernel.

Thanks very much !!!!
 
Your English is getting better. One comment I am unsure about:
vince66 said:
THE GOAL.
The aim is to boot the above mentioned architectures from the FreeBSD 11.1 installed on an external USB Hard Disk.
Click to expand...
Above you mention= MacOS, Windows OS

Do you plan on booting them from a FreeBSD virtual environment(bhyve/xen) or are these platforms you need to image?(per previous posts)

Perhaps you want to run your FreeBSD 11 USB on those machines?
 
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