Solved booting MacPro1,1 with 32bit EFI (not BIOS/Legacy)

balanga · Apr 26, 2023

cabriofahrer said:
I can tell you that the amd64 installation image of NetBSD 9.3 boots on my Laptop with that Intel Baytrail 32-bit EFI, but unfortunately during the installation process, the OS suddenly shuts itself down. It seems to be a clean shutdown, not a hang or a crash. This seems to be an ACPI issue of NetBSD, though. What I am trying to say, maybe it would be easier to have a look at what NetBSD has done and try to copy something from there?

Interesting!

Which should I grab?

USB stick installation images: 64-bit x86 (hybrid), 64-bit x86 (legacy BIOS only), 32-bit x86

cabriofahrer · Apr 26, 2023

Where do you get these options from? When you go to www.netbsd.org and you click on the "USB image" option in amd64, you only get one file called NetBSD-9.3-amd64-install.img:

When you have downloaded and created the installation medium, could you please report if the installation on your machine succeeds or if you get the same problem as I do, please?

balanga · Apr 26, 2023

cabriofahrer said:
Where do you get these options from? When you go to www.netbsd.org and you click on the "USB image" option in amd64, you only get one file called NetBSD-9.3-amd64-install.img:

Announcing NetBSD 9.3 (August 4, 2022)

I don't know my way around the site so I may have gone to the wrong page.

cabriofahrer said:
When you have downloaded and created the installation medium, could you please report if the installation on your machine succeeds or if you get the same problem as I do, please?

Sure, I'll give it a try shortly.

balanga · Apr 26, 2023

I just downloaded it, uncompressed the image and added it to Ventoy. Seemed to boot up without any problem. Takes me back to my old mainframe days with the green text on black

I get a prompt for root device, and not sure what to choose, but with a broken keyboard I doubt whether I can get any further, but at least I can confirm that it boots.

cabriofahrer · Apr 26, 2023

OK, so do you think this could help you to try to implement the possibility to boot and install amd64-FreeBSD on a device with an 32-bit EFI?

cracauer@ · Apr 26, 2023

I think going through GRUB to boot FreeBSD should work.

yuripv79 · Apr 26, 2023

What's interesting, FreeBSD's 4th loader ported to illumos has both loader32.efi and loader64.efi. I am not sure if Toomas Soome is here on forums, probably asking on mailing lists would help understand what's involved.

_martin · Apr 26, 2023

cracauer@ said:
I think going through GRUB to boot FreeBSD should work.

I doubt that. Even now the only way to boot FreeBSD using grub is to chainload.

balanga · Apr 26, 2023

cabriofahrer said:
OK, so do you think this could help you to try to implement the possibility to boot and install amd64-FreeBSD on a device with an 32-bit EFI?

I'd give it a try if I knew how to set about it...

balanga · Apr 26, 2023

_martin said:
I doubt that. Even now the only way to boot FreeBSD using grub is to chainload.

Here is an alternative:-

Code:

menuentry "FreeBSD" {
    insmod ufs2
    insmod bsd
    set root=(hd1,gpt2)
    kfreebsd /boot/loader
}

_martin · Apr 26, 2023

But that is still form of a chainload -- you are relying on a freebsd bootsrap code to boot the kernel (opposed to a Linux one where you are calling kernel directly from a grub).

That is also a legacy one. Not the UEFI one where things are different.

edit: grub was able to natively boot FreeBSD. But I don't remember how much of a "hack that was/is (kfreebsd /boot/kernel/kernel).
I also don't know what has changed in newer versions and if it is still possible to do so in legacy boot (e.g. load zfs and boot from it the same way solaris does).

I was actually eager to help FreeBSD on IA32 efi loader but then kids happened. And I'm happy now if I can go to mountains on my spare time.. :|

Phishfry · Apr 26, 2023

balanga said:
What is actually involved in developing an ia32 UEFI for FreeBSD?

I think its just a matter of building it. Selecting arch.

If I wanted this badly enough I would contact SleepWalker .
He has EDK2 compling down to a science.
He built an image for Rock3 with Tiano bios. Yes an Arm board with a BIOS.
I was blown away.
Officially EDK2 only supports Beaglebone but somehow SleepWalker has it running on much more.
So consult an expert.
He also has his own gig at http://personalbsd.org/

https://twitter.com/S199pWa1k9r

yuripv79 · Apr 27, 2023

balanga did you try using loader.efi from i386 image? e.g. unpack https://download.freebsd.org/releases/i386/i386/13.2-RELEASE/base.txz and grab loader.efi:

Code:

$ file boot/loader.efi
boot/loader.efi: PE32+ executable (EFI application) Intel 80386, for MS Windows

Phishfry · Apr 27, 2023

If that worked than shouldn't the i386 installer work on these bastard 32bit EFI machines?

balanga · Apr 27, 2023

yuripv79 said:
balanga did you try using loader.efi from i386 image? e.g. unpack https://download.freebsd.org/releases/i386/i386/13.2-RELEASE/base.txz and grab loader.efi:

Code:

$ file boot/loader.efi boot/loader.efi: PE32+ executable (EFI application) Intel 80386, for MS Windows

What's the easiest way of getting that file into the amd64-memstick.img?

I know I can mount the image using mdconfig() and replace the file, but how do I recreate the img?

_martin · Apr 27, 2023

It was once discussed /also/ here, PR 268418.

UEFI i386 boot is not implemented on FreeBSD. It's about how the system is prepared and handover is done to FreeBSD kernel. That's why you just can't boot it with grub.
While loader.efi itself exists on i386 version it's not usable.

Phishfry · Apr 27, 2023

balanga said:
What's the easiest way of getting that file into the amd64-memstick.img?

Not a question I would expect from somebody with 9 years on the forum.
Burn image to memstick and mount EFI as FAT32 and copy over.

T-Daemon · Apr 27, 2023

balanga said:
I know I can mount the image using mdconfig() and replace the file, but how do I recreate the img?

Not that is of any use (since loader.efi won't work on i386), just to remember for the next time modifying a installer image:

In case of a .img there is no need to recreate it. A mdconfig(8) attached .img memory disk is acting like a real disk. The file system on the disk can be mounted, read, unmounted.

Whether the content can be changed depends on whether the file system on the image can be mounted write. That is the case with a .img.

To change the content of an .iso image, it must first be extracted and then the image recreated afterwards.

balanga · Apr 28, 2023

Phishfry said:
Not a question I would expect from somebody with 9 years on the forum.
Burn image to memstick and mount EFI as FAT32 and copy over.

9 years already ? Gosh I didn't realise it was so long! I wonder where all the time went...

Actually I do know that I can mount the image file using

mdconfig -a -t vnode -f FreeBSD-xxx.img -u 0

What I was not sure about was how to create an img file once I've made any required changes to /dev/md0....

balanga · Apr 28, 2023

T-Daemon said:
Not that is of any use (since loader.efi won't work on i386), just to remember for the next time modifying a installer image:

In case of a .img there is no need to recreate it. A mdconfig(8) attached .img memory disk is acting like a real disk. The file system on the disk can be mounted, read, unmounted.

How would you actually create the img file once you have change some file or other in the original image.

I realise this doesn't provide the solution I'm looking for, but being able to do this may come in handy at some point.

smithi · Apr 28, 2023

balanga said:
How would you actually create the img file once you have change some file or other in the original image.

I realise this doesn't provide the solution I'm looking for, but being able to do this may come in handy at some point.

mkimg(1)?

That's what's now used to make (amd64) release memstick AND 'hybrid' .ISO images, see

/usr/src/release/amd64/*

[ just monkey-see, I've not done it, but have been trying to grok these hybrid images ]

balanga · Apr 28, 2023

smithi said:
mkimg(1)?

I just looked at he man page but don't see any straightforward way of making an img from an img file mounted on md0....

I was hoping to see something along the lines of:

mkimg -o newFreeBSD.img -p /mnt/md0

where /mnt/md0 is the mount point for the memory disk, but I guess it's far more complicated....

Phishfry · Apr 28, 2023

balanga said:
How would you actually create the img file once you have change some file or other in the original image.

I use two memory disks. Two mount points. /mnt and /mnt1
source md0
destination md1
Create scheme and partitions on destination and then clone memory disk 0 partitions.

Phishfry · Apr 28, 2023

But your whole question is faulty.

You see most all images are padded. Even if not UFS allows 108% full. Look at your mounted disk image with df.

It would have to be a big file to not fit.

smithi · Apr 28, 2023

balanga said:
I just looked at he man page but don't see any straightforward way of making an img from an img file mounted on md0....

I'd have thought the specific mountpoint a mere detail. Couldn't you just copy it to somewhere else if that was an issue?

If you can follow the use of mkimg in the release scripts in the directory shown above, can't you tailor that for your need?

balanga said:
I was hoping to see something along the lines of:

mkimg -o newFreeBSD.img -p /mnt/md0

where /mnt/md0 is the mount point for the memory disk, but I guess it's far more complicated....

If wishes were horses ...