Is the description of "disc1" correct?

[rwv37]

In preparation for installing 14.0 on a new machine, I was just reviewing my notes from the last time I did a fresh install (which was with 13.1). The following warning (regarding picking an install image) from Past Me stood out to Current Me:

### You Probably Don't Want the disc1 Image

Often in the past, I've tried the disc1 image, as its description in the release notes makes it seem like what I want. But I have never been able to get it to boot from a thumb drive, so I always wind up wasting time on it before (successfully) trying the memstick image instead. Maybe I'm reading its description wrong, or maybe its description is wrong, or maybe I'm burning it incorrectly, or whatever. In any case, just go straight to the memstick image.

As it says, I've often fallen prey to this in the past (i.e. not just with 13.1). And sure enough, the release notes for 14.0 still at least seem to indicate that the disc1 image can be used to do an install from a USB drive (emphasis mine):

disc1
This contains the base FreeBSD operating system. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages.

Additionally, this can be written to a USB memory stick (flash drive) for the amd64 architecture and used to do an install on machines capable of booting off USB drives.

As one example of how to use the memstick image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work:

# dd if=FreeBSD-14.0-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso \
of=/dev/da0 bs=1m conv=sync

Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct.

Is this a (recurring) mistake in the documentation? Or is it intended to be usable in this way, but it's somehow broken? Or am I just misreading this?

 

[smithi]

Is this a (recurring) mistake in the documentation? Or is it intended to be usable in this way, but it's somehow broken? Or am I just misreading this?

Have you actually tried dd'ing the 14.0 (or 13.2, 12.3, 12.4) amd64-disc1.iso to a USB stick and booting it?

Certainly works fine with 12.3 disc1 and dvd1.iso, though there was a booting issue with 12.4 dvd1 that only affected some machines, notably some older Thinkpads (mine, T430s)

Not sure about 13.1, but the above issue was fixed for 13.2.

What was / is your hardware?

 

[rwv37]

I have not tried it for 14.0. I've definitely not tried it for 13.2 (I've never done a fresh install of that). I have no idea what earlier versions I have or have not tried it with, nor the specific hardware I tried it with. Best I can say is that I've definitely encountered this problem on multiple physical machines that were almost certainly different hardware, using multiple different FreeBSD versions, over the course of years and years).

To be clear, I'm not really concerned about this for my own purposes in installing 14.0 - I'm just going to go straight to the memstick image, as Past Me suggested. I just figured I'd mention it in case it should be corrected in the documentation.

 

[rwv37]

Oooooh, wait, I just found an earlier version of the same document (which I scrapped after having decided to restart the install entirely for some unrelated reason), wherein I said that I did try it -- and failed -- with 13.1:

#### You probably don't want the disc1 image

I don't understand this based on its description, but I've been unable to get the disc1 image to actually boot from a thumb drive. Maybe the way I've been burning it doesn't set a boot flag? Or maybe it's only good when burned to an optical disk, despite its description saying it can be used on thumb drives? I dunno. Anyway, this (or something like this) has frequently happened to me in the past, and just now too. I always then try a different image, which works. This time (and probably previously too), I tried the memstick image, which worked.

So at least in this case, I actually do know the hardware. I'm not sure exactly what info you're looking for, but here's the hardware-related neofetch output (if you want anything else, please let me know):

CPU: Intel Xeon E5506 (8) @ 2.128GHz
GPU: MGA G200eW WPCM450
Memory: 42376MiB / 65463MiB

It's likely that this same machine is one of the ones I tried and failed with in the past for pre-13.1 versions, but (1) that's not 100% certain, and (2) it definitely happened on other machines, not just this one.

 

[smithi]

I have not tried it for 14.0. I've definitely not tried it for 13.2 (I've never done a fresh install of that). I have no idea what earlier versions I have or have not tried it with, nor the specific hardware I tried it with.

Ok. The problem systems at least included certain model Thinkpads with BIOS boot, not UEFI as I recall, but I'm unsure and can't chase it down now.

Best I can say is that I've definitely encountered this problem on multiple physical machines that were almost certainly different hardware, using multiple different FreeBSD versions, over the course of years and years).

Well, years and years: I was mistaken: I went back through release notes this evening and found the first mentions of being able to dd amd64 ISOs to USB sticks were:

. 12.1R on 9th November 2019
. 13.0R on 13th April 2021
but for some reason not
. 11.4R on 23rd June 2020

To be clear, I'm not really concerned about this for my own purposes in installing 14.0 - I'm just going to go straight to the memstick image, as Past Me suggested. I just figured I'd mention it in case it should be corrected in the documentation.

Assuming you used the exact recommended command line to write ISO images to USB media, then I guess you might have reported the error as it occurred on your hardware, since it works for me and apparently others; i.e. the documents are correct for others as far as we know.

OTOH, we don't have any idea of how many people have tried.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

rwv37 hi

<https://old.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/17wfdiv/-/k9ht662/?context=3>