Freed BSD install fails and drops to mountroot prompt, Help requested

D

Dill0n

Good Afternoon everyone,
I have run across a problem when installing OPNsense to a CoreNUC computer. Yes I know this is not the OPNsense forum but I don’t thing I even got the operating system on the disk yet.. and since they use FreeBSD as their operating system and I believe based on what I have read on the FreeBSD pages the problem is a boot loader or maybe even a computer problem. I am looking for evidence to verify that. Below you will find a partial list of the installation area in question.
Code: 
mountroot:waiting for device /dev/ufs/opnsense_install ....
Mounting from ufs:/dev//opnsense_install  failed with error 19.

Loader variables:
   vfs.root.mountfrom=/dev/ufs/OPNsense_install
   vfs.root.mountfrom.options-ro,noatime

Manual root filesystem specification:
   <fstype>:<device> {options}
         Mount <device> using filesystem <fstu[e>
         and with the specified (optional) option list.

     eg. ufs:/dev/da0s1a
           zfs:zroot/ROOT/default
           cd9660:/dev/cd0 ro
               (which is equivalent to: mount -t cd9660 -o ro /dev/cd0 /)

?                    List valid disk boot devices
.                    Yield 1 second (for background tasks)
<empty line>  Abort manual input

mountroot>
I suspected based on the above that there was no data on the disk (ada0) and opening the disk in windows shows the disk is allocated (partitioned) but not formatted in any way. I also halted the system at the boot menu and tried turning off the ACPI found that the boot process halted prematurely. So then I tried leaving ACPI on and setting safeboot to on and that didn’t help either.

Another thing I noticed is that one of the utilities I ran on the computer said it had a EFI not a UEFI .. and what I see is the AMI (American Megatrends Inc) logo when the computer is booted into the place where the BIOS used to be so. Additionally it is NOT the normal graphics style like the UEFI it is in fact the old style textual based display. So is this EIF or old style BIOS who is to know? Since I cant get hold of the Manufacturer because I cant find a telephone number I guess I might just have to wing it here.

Finally I tried placing all of the following files on to my RUFUS disk and NONE of them were

FreeBSD-14.1-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso
FreeBSD-14.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso
FreeBSD-14.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img

Bootable so I can install the bare operating system on the 256gb SSD to see if that helped anything. I would undertake the effort to manually format the drive with either UFS or ZFS files and load the operating system directly from the OPNsense disk… which I could easily do but that will require a good bit of reading so that I don’t make any mistakes… I don’t want the operating system compromised in some way before I even get the OPNsense system loaded.

I don’t know if I left anything out or not at this point… If anyone has any comments or suggestions please put them in a response.. from what I can tell I am not the only one with this strange “error 19” ghost running around their system. If I don’t respond to you in a day or so just figure I am in a loonie bin… from this problem.

D
 
Why not just try FreeBSD installation first, and once you've got that working, go back to something else if you want?

EFI/UEFI are pretty much the same thing, and these days you should prefer that over BIOS/LEGACY/CSM options.

Make sure secure boot is off.

Definitely do not turn off ACPI.

Unless the computer is very old you should be able to boot off a USB device.

That FreeBSD-14.1 memstick file (the .img one) is the one I use to install FreeBSD 14.1 from a USB key, so it should work.

Look for the BOOT options in the "BIOS" settings of your computer.

Do you have any more information on the computer - what is CoreNUC? Looks like a cheapish mini PC, so they sometimes have hardware that doesn't have a lot of BSD support.

Try a Linux installation just to check that works.

Not sure why you think the system will be compromised? If you are that worried don't connect it to the internet while you are learning how to install operating systems on it.
 
richardtoohey2 said:
Why not just try FreeBSD installation first, and once you've got that working, go back to something else if you want?
Click to expand...
>I think I said I had tried all three of the versions .img, & .iso and I loaded it on to the Ventoy disk and burned them to DVD and none would boot. My DVD is USB based and it is what I used to install the windows operating system on this computer to begin with.. I have never had any problem using it to install operating systems and they have all booted.
richardtoohey2 said:
EFI/UEFI are pretty much the same thing, and these days you should prefer that over BIOS/LEGACY/CSM options.

Make sure secure boot is off.

Definitely do not turn off ACPI.

Unless the computer is very old you should be able to boot off a USB device.

That FreeBSD-14.1 memstick file (the .img one) is the one I use to install FreeBSD 14.1 from a USB key, so it should work.

Look for the BOOT options in the "BIOS" settings of your computer.

Do you have any more information on the computer - what is CoreNUC? Looks like a cheapish mini PC, so they sometimes have hardware that doesn't have a lot of BSD support.

Try a Linux installation just to check that works.

Not sure why you think the system will be compromised? If you are that worried don't connect it to the internet while you are learning how to install operating systems on it.
Click to expand...
Secure boot is off and though I have tried ACPI off it is not there currently as I couldnt even get to first base with it set that way.
The computer is very new with over 20 processors and threads.. the reason I am using Ventoy is because the tools to load the image onto the thumb drive kept giving me errors and would not load for me.. I tried several imagers including one from microsoft and etcher.
The information I gleaned from the FCC web site (by virtue of the FCC ID) is all that I have and it is very slim... not even a telephone number for these guys.
Never tried the linux but thats a good thought.. thats where I will go next

Part of my frustration is there is nothing that tells you at what stage I was when I got the "mountroot" I know I never got to install a partition so it cant be far along... having said this microsoft never tells you the sequence either.. so ..

Ok let me get busy.. thanks for your efforts. I will post more when I have something to report

D
 
Well Debian 12 installs in under 25 minutes and runs great... its actually pretty fast and what is more picky about whats installed on a computer than windows 11 and it was running that when I got it.. so now lets see if it will install on top of Debian .. I know it will wipe out the data but I got the impression that I could not mount the ufs or zfs files system on the nvma disk so lets see if anything has changed
 
You are mixing up a lot of terminology so I’m not sure what you mean exactly.

20 cores isn’t a lot these days, FreeBSD will be fine.

FreeBSD works fine with NVMe SSDs and you can use UFS or ZFS.

But yes you need to find a good way of making a bootable image (USB keys less wasteful than using a DVD but up to you).

Just assume you’ve going to make a few mistakes and go around a few loops and you will get there.

Once you’ve got FreeBSD installing you should be on the right path for OPNsense or whatever you want to install.
 

richardtoohey2, Before I forget thanks your help I dont seem to be getting anyone else to chime in here and I can use all the help I can get.​

What was mixed up in my terminology ? and yes I know there are computer with a lot more cores the one I am using to download files on is brand spanking new less than 2 months old its the stupid windows operating system on it that stinks
and mistakes? I have made a many.. I am an old fart I go back to the ARPA net in the early 70 and have been programming that long as well.. but when you are learning something new it takes a while... if it were Debian or Kali or even the original UNIX operating system I would be fine but I have never installed BSD even though I have used the operating system at work. Ya gotta learn somehow, its probably one the most expensive things you will ever do in your life time.

Now back the BSD and installing Opnsense on my little computer. I am nearly to the conclusion that the problem is either the files I downloaded are not downloading correctly (read that as files are busted) or there is a bug in the software. The reason I wonder about the bug in the software is because I have seen the error 19 crop up in several posts that complain about there being a bug. Usually I would discount most of that but there are too many unanswered questions floating around in my head at the moment that I need to resolve and while the documentation is generally good there are several areas where it could be much better such as a list of error messages that result from failures in installation.. Not including something like that is what microsoft does or the make it so hard to find that you could be dead and burried before you answer the questions you have.

One of the problems I am having with windows 11 that is hampering my efforts that I appear to have a problem entering things in the environmental path and having it register hence I cant get openssl to verify my downloads. This is the reason I dislike microsoft they gotta make everything so darn hard. That wouldnt bother me much except that my daughter has my Kali computer and she is not in the state at the moment or I could fix the problem here. Oh and I tried installing balena etcher on an old 32 bit computer running windows and it wrote to the USB stick ok but you cant access it.

So I am headed to try Medicat to create USB stick and put the files on that.. lets see what happens installing the installation software on that.

Later
 
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