Hello,
My main question centers on error messages seen when using each of 'dd' and 'ddpt' when I was booted to a local FreeBSD 12.1 boot disk, on a Panasonic CF-19 laptop.
I'd seen a similar error message when trying to create the boot.img file using ddpt.
I'd picked up the initial 'dd' shell command from some Linux documentation (DualBoot/Mbr - Ubuntu Wiki). Maybe GNU/Linux differs in how it implements DD?
My main question: Using dd in FreeBSD or ddpt from FreeBSD ports, is it possible to create a backup of the MBR/BIOS disk boot sectors, minus the disk partition information? I'd like to be able to restore the disk's present bootloader (Windows 10 afaict) if other bootloaders (e.g Grub) may not work out
If it may help to describe any of the context to this question, as to how this question has occurred, I'm trying to back up the boot sector for the laptop's internal hard disk, minus the MBR partition data. This backup would be saved on an external boot disk I've created, such that presently has FreeBSD 12.1 installed on it (UFS root partition) from a local FreeBSD 12.1 build. This would be before installing Grub to the laptop's internal hard disk, from within a third OS, in one intermediate step before installing FreeBSD on the disk. In this installation:
While my main question is focusing on dd, I believe I'm largely on my own with the rest of that. I'm OK with that - right now, only wondering about how to back up the boot sectors on the internal hard disk, before installing Grub?
TY for any help to this effect.
Health,
- Sean
My main question centers on error messages seen when using each of 'dd' and 'ddpt' when I was booted to a local FreeBSD 12.1 boot disk, on a Panasonic CF-19 laptop.
Code:
dd if=/dev/ada0 of=/root/boot.img bs=446 count=1
dd: /dev/ada0: Invalid argument
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes transferred in 0.001164 secs (0 bytes/sec)
I'd seen a similar error message when trying to create the boot.img file using ddpt.
I'd picked up the initial 'dd' shell command from some Linux documentation (DualBoot/Mbr - Ubuntu Wiki). Maybe GNU/Linux differs in how it implements DD?
My main question: Using dd in FreeBSD or ddpt from FreeBSD ports, is it possible to create a backup of the MBR/BIOS disk boot sectors, minus the disk partition information? I'd like to be able to restore the disk's present bootloader (Windows 10 afaict) if other bootloaders (e.g Grub) may not work out
If it may help to describe any of the context to this question, as to how this question has occurred, I'm trying to back up the boot sector for the laptop's internal hard disk, minus the MBR partition data. This backup would be saved on an external boot disk I've created, such that presently has FreeBSD 12.1 installed on it (UFS root partition) from a local FreeBSD 12.1 build. This would be before installing Grub to the laptop's internal hard disk, from within a third OS, in one intermediate step before installing FreeBSD on the disk. In this installation:
- This laptop has BIOS firmware
- This is for a new installation of FreeBSD 12.2, which I've built under local build config, along with ports built for the 12.2 build under Poudriere
- This will be for a multi-boot installation on a Panasonic CF-19 laptop. Windows 10 is installed on another MBR partition on the same internal hard disk.
- I've tried using GPT on the internal hard disk. It appears that Windows 10 is wholly unable to boot from a GPT disk on a machine using BIOS firmware. This limitation may have been passingly denoted in some Microsoft documentation.
- The laptop is presently using an MBR disk partition layout. Three of the existing partitions on the disk are somehow in use by Windows, each of those being a primary MBR partition.
- The FreeBSD installation will be created under an EBR (extended) partition. As well as a FreeBSD ZFS partition, this EBR partition will also contain a partition for FreeBSD swap and crash dumps, and may contain partitions for Linux boot and Linux root filesystems. The swap partition may be shared with that Linux installation.
- If the conventional FreeBSD bootloader may not be able to load FreeBSD from within an EBR partition, I've begun looking at other options for a bootloader - such as in managing a Grub install with a third OS installation, namely Alpine Linux. Ideally, this would be where the Grub install would originate, for the final disk configuration
- Ideally, the FreeBSD installation will be produced with a ZFS on Root configuration for FreeBSD. I'm not certain of whether and how this may affect the availability of the FreeBSD installation to the FreeBSD bootloader, if using zfsboot. So, I'm looking at Grub - hoping that that may work out for this installation.
- Ideally, the Linux boot and root partitions would also use ZFS - not affecting the FreeBSD install, albeit. The Grub system available with Alpine Linux may provide some support for this. Albeit, I'm not certain of whether and how it may integrate with FreeBSD ZFS support and grub.
- As long as the main bootloader on the disk can at least boot Windows 10, I can try to adjust the installation requirements if this present config may not work out
- I don't consider it an option, at this time, to abandon the Windows 10 installation on the laptop. Up to the point of discovering some of the limitations on this installation, I'd thought it would be a pretty nice idea to have a FreeBSD installation on the laptop, too. I'm willing to manage a separate Alpine Linux install for this, if simply to have something to manage a Grub bootloader on the disk.
While my main question is focusing on dd, I believe I'm largely on my own with the rest of that. I'm OK with that - right now, only wondering about how to back up the boot sectors on the internal hard disk, before installing Grub?
TY for any help to this effect.
Health,
- Sean