Solved Lenovo ThinkCentre M92

Has anyone run FreeBSD on a Lenovo ThinkCentre M92?

I get a msg saying 'No operating system found'

I've tried changing various BIOS setting and I know there is an operating system on the disk. In fact I've tried several disks, but can't figure what the problem is.

Perhaps a BIOS upgrade is called for...
 
It might have something to do with the BIOS/UEFI. There is a reference to Lenovo ThinkCentre M92p, involving the UEFI in refusing to boot particular OS’s
Lenovo UEFI Only Wants To Boot Windows, RHEL

... Matthew Garrett [ 1 ] investigated and found that the UEFI on the Lenovo ThinkCentre M92p desktop was explicitly checking for the presence of "Windows Boot Manager" and "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" upon installing an UEFI-supported operating system.

From https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIyOTg

[ 1 ] https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/20187.html
… if you want to run … on these systems you're probably best off changing the firmware to perform a legacy boot.
 
Does it boot in UEFI mode? You need to have an entry in the NVRAM that adds your boot partition.
Also, secure boot - if the boot loader is not signed, the machine would refuse to boot from it.
Is the OS installed on an MBR disk? If yes, is your partition marked as active? Use gpart.
Can you boot from a FreeBSD installation medium?
If you have UFS, does the boot partition have the "bootme" attribute?
Etc.

Has anyone run FreeBSD on a Lenovo ThinkCentre M92?

I get a msg saying 'No operating system found'

I've tried changing various BIOS setting and I know there is an operating system on the disk. In fact I've tried several disks, but can't figure what the problem is.

Perhaps a BIOS upgrade is called for...
 
It might have something to do with the BIOS/UEFI. There is a reference to Lenovo ThinkCentre M92p, involving the UEFI in refusing to boot particular OS’s


From https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIyOTg

[ 1 ] https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/20187.html
Yes, the uefi boot on this machines seems to refuse nearly everything expect Windows, unbelieveable. To get a clean FreeBSD 12.2 UEFI Installation on a M92p, I needed following:
- Update to the latest Bios and configure the Bios to UEFI Boot and switch off Legacy Support(CSM).
- Boot the USB FreeBSD Installer. (The USB uefi boot works and seems not to be refused!)
- install the system to a clean disk and use the defaults. (GPT partition table, EFI partition, UFS partition and swap)
- After installation and before rebooting, enter the shell and type in following:
mkdir /mnt1
mount -tmsdosfs /dev/ada0p1 /mnt1
cd /mnt1
efibootmgr -c -L "Windows Boot Manager" -l efi/boot/BOOTx64.efi


- List the boot order with efibootmgr .
You should see a new line named "Windows Boot Loader". On my system I got the index "Boot0000".

- We need the index for the last steps, In my case "0":
efibootmgr -a 0
efibootmgr -n 0


- Check your boot list with efibootmgr .
I ended with the following:
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout : 0 seconds
BootOrder : 0000, 000C, 000D, 0003
+Boot0000* Windows Boot Loader
Boot000C* UEFI: IP4 Intel(R) 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection
Boot000D* UEFI: IP6 Intel(R) 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection
Boot0003* Generic Usb Device


cd
umount /mnt1
exit


After reboot enter F12 to view the Boot-Menu. You should see the "Windows Boot Loader" entry, which will hopefully boot your FreeBSD. My system boots perfectly :)
Just for clarification, I use the System for FreeBSD only! If someone will kill his Windows installation with the above commands, not my fault...
 
Excellent work! Nice to know that someone has managed to get around this awful Windows-only restriction.
 
Hi.. unluckyly I bought a M73 Lenovo desktop hoping to install pfsense on it. Since pfsense is based on BSD, can anyone help as I am not able ot boot it after installing.
 
Hi.. unluckyly I bought a M73 Lenovo desktop hoping to install pfsense on it. Since pfsense is based on BSD, can anyone help as I am not able ot boot it after installing.
Can you say exactly what you did? Presumably pfSense was able to access the disk whilst installing...

Personally I'd boot up from an mfsBSD stick and see what is actually on the disk.

If you have a USB enclosure (worth getting if you don't) then you might be able to check if the same disk boots from USB.
 
Hi.. unluckyly I bought a M73 Lenovo desktop hoping to install pfsense on it. Since pfsense is based on BSD, can anyone help as I am not able ot boot it after installing.
I was just looking at the specs for the M73 and some appear to have

  • PCIe WLAN4 : 11b/g/n wireless, PCIe Half Mini Card, Intel Centrino® Wireless-N 105, 1x1 (selected models)
Some have an aeriel connector on the back. I wonder if it would be possible to attach a WWAN card in this slot... but there again how do you connect a SIM card?..
 
Good to see that you have it working. Just out of interest, what are you using as a second network interface?
Hi Balanga, I am using Dell 0R886R 4 Port Pro 1000VT NIC that I bought from ebay for AUD 35. its having intel chip and got detected without any issue.
 
I was just looking at the specs for the M73 and some appear to have

  • PCIe WLAN4 : 11b/g/n wireless, PCIe Half Mini Card, Intel Centrino® Wireless-N 105, 1x1 (selected models)
Some have an aeriel connector on the back. I wonder if it would be possible to attach a WWAN card in this slot... but there again how do you connect a SIM card?..
I am using ThinkCentre M73 SFF and its having one Low Profile, PCIe 3.0 x16 and 2 Low Profile, PCIe 2.0 x1 slots. I have installed 4 port Nic in PCIe 3.0 slot.
 
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