Preboot Menu

[fr33bsd]

Hi,

how is the preboot menu that can show up before the "welcome to freebsd - menu" on boot up configured? What is the name of its config file?

The menu contains 3 options: F1 for FreeBSD, F5 for Drive 1 and F6 for PXE.

 

[Argentum]

how is the preboot menu that can show up before the "welcome to freebsd - menu" on boot up configured? What is the name of its config file?

The menu contains 3 options: F1 for FreeBSD, F5 for Drive 1 and F6 for PXE.

This probably depends on your motherboard. Newer MB-s have even UEFI shell with many commands. You can run this before the actual FreeBSD boot starts.

 

[fr33bsd]

Nah, I think it is the menu of boot0cfg()

 

[fr33bsd]

Nah, I think it is the menu of boot0cfg()

I cannot reduce ticks to zero to turn off wait time. Parameter -t 0 does not work.

 

[fr33bsd]

I cannot reduce ticks to zero to turn off wait time. Parameter -t 0 does not work.

Ah, it can be reduced by -t 1 But it still occures. I even tried boot0cfg <device>, but the menu still occures.

 

[leebrown66]

boot0cfg(8) explains how to make it non-interactive, if that is your goal.

 

[fr33bsd]

boot0cfg(8) explains how to make it non-interactive, if that is your goal.

To go back to non-interactive booting, use gpart(8) to install the de-
fault MBR:

gpart bootcode -b /boot/mbr ada0

Tried it already. It kills the working boot up device.

 

[leebrown66]

Assuming this is bsdlabel on MBR, is the active partition correctly set? ( gpart set -a active)
I have not used bsdlabel/MBR since GPT became available, so I'm not really familiar with this anymore.

 

[fr33bsd]

i did
fdisk -BI /dev/ada0
bsdlabel -B -w ada0s1
newfs -U -O1 /dev/ada0s1a
boot0cfg -v -B -t1 ada0
and it works that far until
gpart bootcode -b /boot/mbr ada0

 

[leebrown66]

Is fdisk/bsdlabel a hard requirement? Personally I would switch to GPT, ideally with EFI, but that's my comfort zone and I know some legacy equipment won't understand GPT.

 

[Alexander88207]

I cannot reduce ticks to zero to turn off wait time. Parameter -t 0 does not work.

Hello,

if you mean the wait time on the boot screen add autoboot_delay="0" to /boot/loader.conf.

 

[fr33bsd]

Hello,

if you mean the wait time on the boot screen add autoboot_delay="0" to /boot/loader.conf.

The boot load menu boot0cfg deploys is meant, but this is also useful to reduce boot time ?

 

[SirDice]

boot0cfg(8) only works on MBR partitioned disks and can only boot FreeBSD from UFS. And no, it cannot be extended to include ZFS. There simply isn't enough room to fit ZFS support in there.

 

[covacat]

boot0cfg(8) only works on MBR partitioned disks and can only boot FreeBSD from UFS. And no, it cannot be extended to include ZFS. There simply isn't enough room to fit ZFS support in there.

actually boot0cfg code is fs agnostic
it just loads the first sector of the selected partition and executes the code
i remember i had and 8.x system that was mbr and booted zfs
you had to dd zfs bootcode to the start of pool providers (was messy enough anyway)