Solved installing 15.1 to an USB stick with bootable EFI

mauror · Monday at 12:31 PM

Hi all, have just installed FreeBSD 15.1 to an usb stick, now I see that has no EFI boot mode, which I would prefer as bootable from any pc (only usb stick containing EFI partition are detected as bootable by some pc). In the installation menu I did not see any choice for it, and ask if you could kindly instruct how to perform this.
Please also consider I'm not smart about Freebsd.
Thank you much

covacat · Monday at 12:38 PM

if you have a swap partition on your stick shrink it and create an efi one. format it to fat32 and copy efi boot files on it

Maturin · Monday at 12:39 PM

A quick'n'dirty way was to write the ISO image to the stick. Then you can increase the root partition, mount it, and add/edit/copy to it, what you like.

mauror · Monday at 12:55 PM

covacat said:
if you have a swap partition on your stick shrink it and create an efi one. format it to fat32 and copy efi boot files on it

thanks for replying. So, no such feature selectable during installation.
Ok, I create an EFI partition FAT32 on the target usb (before or after installation?), but then what files should I put in there to make it work?

mauror · Monday at 12:58 PM

covacat said:
Maturin said:

A quick'n'dirty way was to write the ISO image to the stick. Then you can increase the root partition, mount it, and add/edit/copy to it, what you like.

Click to expand...

suppose I'll need to operate it in Freebsd environment which believe has no GUI tool to make all that....

covacat · Monday at 1:07 PM

loader.efi as bootx64.efi in the EFI/BOOT directory

Maturin · Monday at 2:11 PM

mauror said:
suppose I'll need to operate it in Freebsd environment which believe has no GUI tool to make all that....

Yupp.

cracauer@ · Monday at 2:21 PM

The installer should make an install that boots both with BIOS and EFI. Have you tried EFI boot?

Also, friends don't let friends use USB sticks. Any random m.2 drive in a USB3 enclosure is much better.

Maturin · Monday at 2:45 PM

cracauer@ said:
Also, friends don't let friends use USB sticks. Any random m.2 driver in a USB3 enclosure is much better.

Sure. But in this case I guess this is only for to get a first peek at FreeBSD.

covacat · Monday at 3:02 PM

an usb stick is good enough for readonly use, rescue tool, etc.
for a live fs will suck. the better ones which are in fact small form factor ssds will do

Phishfry · Monday at 3:22 PM

I have been using a Innodisk USB3 stick 64GB for my operating system since FreeCAD was removed from ports.
Just for CAD work.

So lucky that I had FreeBSD 14.3 on my EFI USB Stick with FreeCAD installed. It was a real pleasure.
I am glad that FreeCAD is back in ports now.

Phishfry · Monday at 3:24 PM

The biggest issue is drive names.

When booting off my USB Live Stick if I stuck another USB drive in the system it would crash.

The bootable stick needed to be in a certain USB Port otherwise drives change name.

I highly suggest you use LABELS for your bootable USB disk to avoid that problem.

MG · Monday at 3:34 PM

Installing to an USB-stick and boot should work with UEFI and BIOS systems.
Did you reset to factory defaults and disable secure boot again? I often need this with HP's refusing to boot because they remember generated keys based on a previous bootdevice.

Phishfry · Monday at 3:42 PM

mauror said:
Hi all, have just installed FreeBSD 15.1 to an usb stick, now I see that has no EFI boot mode, w

You need to look at the BIOS. You want pure UEFI mode. Not legacy or CSM.
FreeBSD or any Operating system does not have the ability to change how the machine is setup to boot.
That is something you must address. Every BIOS is different so look and ask questions if you have them.

Phishfry · Monday at 3:51 PM

On top of that the memstick installer uses a different boot method for compatibility.
MBR with EFi. Most people use GPT with EFI.

Code:

 # gpart show da0
=>       1  31686655  da0  MBR  (15G)
         1     66584    1  efi  (33M)
     66585   2909584    2  freebsd  [active]  (1.4G)
   2976169  28710487       - free -  (14G)

Try plugging the USB stick in after FreeBSD memstick installer is booting.

mauror · Monday at 5:44 PM

try to explain with images. PC-Laptop production evolves. Modern ones are time by time more selective in BIOS features and often disallow some custom configuration, in the name of "security"

here above is a relatively recent HP laptop. Two usb stick are connected, but only the one with EFI partition (Verbatim, Freebsd install media) is detected, the other one was a Samsung with the Freebsd fully installed, no EFI no party. In the BIOS settings I have disabled both secure boot and fast boot, no other similar setting present.

here's an older HP laptop which has a BIOS with more items (at that time they trusted the user) so have disabled secure boot, fast boot, and enabled "legacy" mode. As you see both usb stick are detected and bootable, ad the Verbatim one appear in the two mode: UEFI and MBR. I can boot the Samsung from there.

I have another laptop, MSI Katana, that could let me boot a non-EFI volume but this feature is in a submenu available only discovering the "Hide functions" with a weird combination of keys and only allowing one mode or the other, not both same time, not fitting my needs.

This is why I need an EFI partition on my USB stick with the Freebsd 15.1 installation to boot.

Easy way to get it in an installation step or any easy trick for one like me not familiar with Freebsd?
Thank you

mauror · 2026-10-01T08:04:08+0100

sorry all, thanks for having tried to help, was my mistake, after some other attempts i discovered the "GPT-UEFI" mode selection in the last menu before installation

(for the happiness of all my home pc)