I used a sata dvd drive to install FreeBSD 8 AMD64 to a 4GB USB stick, using a standard install. The only change I made during install was removal of the swap partition (I have 4GB of RAM).
The install seemed to all go fine, and it starts booting off the USB stick but then seems to just hang.
It gives a suggestions about if there are invalid options then try vfs.root.mountfrom.options=rw (is this just a standard troubleshooting suggestion message or is this actually an error?), then it tells me that its one of the loader variables anyway.
With verbose logging, this is where it seems to get stuck:
The LED on the USB flash drive itself stays red all the time, as if it is doing something but I have tried leaving it for a long time (1.5 hours) and it never seems to load.
If I press the button on the front of the machine it does come up with a message saying that it is too busy to go to state S5, so maybe it's not completely hanging but it never seems to load.
Should I just try waiting much longer? Is it thrashing the drive for some reason? If it is just taking too long and it's not hanging, is there any way to speed this up and optimize for a USB drive (e.g. memory disks?)
Update: it boots fine if I plug the DVD drive back in, but this is not feasible (because there is nowhere to put it, I open up the case and plug it into the motherboard just to install the OS then I want to ditch the DVD drive entirely)
Update 2: that seemed to work twice but now it is not even booting with the DVD drive connected.
The install seemed to all go fine, and it starts booting off the USB stick but then seems to just hang.
It gives a suggestions about if there are invalid options then try vfs.root.mountfrom.options=rw (is this just a standard troubleshooting suggestion message or is this actually an error?), then it tells me that its one of the loader variables anyway.
Code:
Loader variables:
vfs.root.mountfrom=ufs:/dev/da0s1a
vfs.root.mountfrom.options=rw
With verbose logging, this is where it seems to get stuck:
Code:
mountroot> (probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Down reving Protocol Version from 2 to 0?
pass0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
pass0: <FLASH Drive SM_USB20 1100> Removable Direct Access SCSI-0 device
pass0: 40.000MB/s transfers
GEOM: new disk da0
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <FLASH Drive SM_USB20 1100> Removable Direct Access SCSI-0 device
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0 3824MB (7831552 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 487C)
The LED on the USB flash drive itself stays red all the time, as if it is doing something but I have tried leaving it for a long time (1.5 hours) and it never seems to load.
If I press the button on the front of the machine it does come up with a message saying that it is too busy to go to state S5, so maybe it's not completely hanging but it never seems to load.
Should I just try waiting much longer? Is it thrashing the drive for some reason? If it is just taking too long and it's not hanging, is there any way to speed this up and optimize for a USB drive (e.g. memory disks?)
Update: it boots fine if I plug the DVD drive back in, but this is not feasible (because there is nowhere to put it, I open up the case and plug it into the motherboard just to install the OS then I want to ditch the DVD drive entirely)
Update 2: that seemed to work twice but now it is not even booting with the DVD drive connected.