Installer demands network connection: full memstick recognized as mini-memstick

B

burmaldist

Hello,

I'm trying to install FreeBSD, but the installer acts as if I am using a mini-memstick image and asks for a network connection to fetch base system packages. I do not have network access during the installation.

Details of my setup:
- Image file downloaded: FreeBSD-15.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img
- How I wrote it: dd if=FreeBSD-15.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/sda bs=4M status=progress conv=sync
- Target system specs: intel core i7-12650H Nvidia rtx 4060 laptop 16gb ram

When I start bsdinstall, it asks for a network configuration and fails to find local distribution sets.

Could you please help me understand why the installer isn't picking up the local packages from the USB drive

Thanks in advance!
 
burmaldist said:
When I start bsdinstall, it asks for a network configuration and fails to find local distribution sets.

Could you please help me understand why the installer isn't picking up the local packages from the USB drive
Click to expand...
What kind of installation system packages are you referring to?

Distribution sets (base.txz, kernel.txz, src.txz, etc. ), previously stored in /usr/freebsd-dist but not included anymore since 15.0, following the transition to pkgbase, or pkgbase packages (FreeBSD-*.pkg), stored in /usr/freebsd-packages/offline on the installer memstick?
 
T-Daemon said:
but not included anymore since 15.0, following the transition to pkgbase, or pkgbase packages
Click to expand...

FreeBSD has used distribution sets since FreeBSD 1.0.
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Support for distribution sets is planned to be totally removed in FreeBSD 16. Such a shame.
 
I am using FreeBSD 15.1-CURRENT.

I didn't realize that 15.x transitioned to pkgbase and no longer includes traditional distribution sets. Since I don't have network access during the installation process, this explains why the installer was asking for a connection.

Thank you for clarifying!
 
As per your orig. message you have a 15.1-RELEASE memstick. This contains both distribution sets as well as base pkgs. If you are doing a fresh install pick off-line install and you won't be asked about network connection.
 
One can easily add the distribution sets on the memstick.img, assuming the USB disk is >1 GB in size.

After dd(1) the image on USB, gpart(8) "resize" the "freebsd" slice and the "freebsd-ufs" partition in the "freebsd" slice, growfs(8) the "freebsd-ufs" partition, mount the partition, download MANIFEST, base.txz, kernel.txz, etc. into /mnt/usr/freebsd-dist.
 
So basically, as of 15.0 installer (based on the link Phishfry provided up in #7) one cannot do "traditional install (distribution sets), offline" unless you are using the DVD images.

I would have thought that option should be available in the "full" memstick image, simply because a lot of systems don't have a DVD drive anymore and the sizes of USB drives is a lot bigger than they used to be. Heck quick look at walmart.com shows 128GB USB3 for 25USB. What's the size of a DVD media?
Are dist sets and pkgbase packages both included on DVD images?

If so then this makes me go "hmmm" and "why".
Sounds like even 15.0 installer on memstick was trying to push pkgbase.

I'm not arguing the merits of pkgbase, but it just feels odd that "pkgbase is going to be the default in 16.0-RELEASE" and it appears to be the preferred for 15.0-RELEASE memstick images.
"memstick, offline" means "pkgbase".
 
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