Solved Booting and installing from a bootable USB

G

Gato Preto

Hi everyone!

I'm a Windows user that wants to try FreeBSD, so I decided to install FreeBSD on a old computer that I own but this machine has no DVD/CD reader so I tried to make a bootable USB for this computer to see if it worked but I didn't.

My question is: how I can make a bootable USB with a ISO image for a i386 computer.

I've tried with Rufus and Unetbootin but they didn't work. I've also tried with a memstick image but the result was a failure too, I searched for solutions on the Internet but I didn't find something that answered correclty my issue.

Thanks in advance!
 
I've used unetbootin on Windows to create FreeBSD bootable USB drives before without any issues.

Have you got a alternative USB drive you could try? I once spent a full weekend trying to diagnose something similar and as soon as I tried a different USB drive it worked!
 
It's actually very straightforward....

grab http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/...3/FreeBSD-10.3-RELEASE-i386-mini-memstick.img and create a bootable USB stick using https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/.

This basically is a FreeBSD bootstrap which boots FreeBSD partitions your hard disk and does a few admin tasks before installing FreeBSD over the Internet, so assumes you have a physical connection when you boot.

This is process is described in the FreeBSD bible at this point https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/bsdinstall-pre.html
 
Tabs said:
I've used unetbootin on Windows to create FreeBSD bootable USB drives before without any issues.

Have you got a alternative USB drive you could try? I once spent a full weekend trying to diagnose something similar and as soon as I tried a different USB drive it worked!
Click to expand...

I'll try with ana alternative USB drive, I didn't think about that! :p
 
balanga said:
It's actually very straightforward....

grab http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/...3/FreeBSD-10.3-RELEASE-i386-mini-memstick.img and create a bootable USB stick using https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/.

This basically is a FreeBSD bootstrap which boots FreeBSD partitions your hard disk and does a few admin tasks before installing FreeBSD over the Internet, so assumes you have a physical connection when you boot.

This is process is described in the FreeBSD bible at this point https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/bsdinstall-pre.html
Click to expand...

I'll try that, just one more thing, the procedure on Amd64 is the same (using the Amd64 version instead)? Thanks!
 
Yes, it's the same procedure. The excellent documentation illustrated with numerous screenshots will walk you through it step by step. Just go for it!

Of course you can also try it on a virtual machine to get familiar with both the installation process and the operating system itself. That will help you decide if FreeBSD is for you without actually messing with your machine.
 
Beastie said:
Yes, it's the same procedure. The excellent documentation illustrated with numerous screenshots will walk you through it step by step. Just go for it!

Of course you can also try it on a virtual machine to get familiar with both the installation process and the operating system itself. That will help you decide if FreeBSD is for you without actually messing with your machine.
Click to expand...

Hi! I've already tried it in a Virtual Machine, I liked it but I had problems with connection on the VM so I decided to install it in the "real life". Now I'll try to install it and if I've any problem I'll post here.

Thanks for your attention!
 
Gato Preto said:
Hi everyone!

I'm a Windows user that wants to try FreeBSD, so I decided to install FreeBSD on a old computer that I own but this machine has no DVD/CD reader so I tried to make a bootable USB for this computer to see if it worked but I didn't.

My question is: how I can make a bootable USB with a ISO image for a i386 computer.

I've tried with Rufus and Unetbootin but they didn't work. I've also tried with a memstick image but the result was a failure too, I searched for solutions on the Internet but I didn't find something that answered correclty my issue.

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Rufus do can hlpe user to do what it says , but it's a bit complicated for a novice .
 
Rufus is an excellent tool for Windows and works for both FreeBSD and Linux

I have used FreeBSD since 1995 and for me it is the best OS for running a server. I like to develop and test software at home on a similar system at home before uploading to my live server. That being said, it is not out of the box as easy to use as some more popular unix operating systems. Drivers and software you may want on desktop probably are not included by default. I suggest to try NomadBSD, it's pretty nice. I had to start over due to a move (half way around the world) and happened to buy 4 HP Compaq 6005 Pro Small Form Factor PC's for $10 each and FreeBSD will not boot. Boot loader fails at the BTX Loader stage. Yeah, I have tried everything from different USB sticks, installing on another PC and moving the drive, different versions including NomadBSD, and nothing works. Various flavors of Linux do work.

On another older machine, recently, I replaced the drive with an SSI drive and spent 3 days trying to get a couple video cards to run Xorg with better than 1024x768, and failed. Considered buying a suggested GPU for $30 - $70 online but from the same local store I got two cards for $20; the first one I tried worked up to 1920x1080 resolution.

In summary, sometimes it is easier to change the hardware than waste days trying to configure something. Time is better spent doing other things than trying to make old hardware workable.

SJ
 
Preparing IMG
- On Windows
For Windows exist Win32disk (https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/) program. It’s very easy to use.

- On FreeBSD/Linux/MacOS
Open FreeBSD terminal and run:
Code: 
dd if=Downloads/FreeBSD-13.0-uefi.img of=/dev/da0 bs=10M

Open Linux terminal and run:
Code: 
dd if=Downloads/FreeBSD-13.0-uefi.img of=/dev/sdb0 bs=10M

Open MacOS terminal and run:
Code: 
dd if=Downloads/FreeBSD-13.0-uefi.img of=/dev/disk0 bs=10M

Preparing ISO
- On Windows
Right-click on the ISO image and select - "Burn disc image"
- On FreeBSD/Linux/MacOS
Choose any program, there are a lot of them. For example: Xfburn


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