Preparing 7.2 USB boot disk with Mac OS X Disk Utility

D

DirtyGerman

Hello everyone,
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I'm looking for advice on installing FreeBSD to a new computer built from scratch, using a USB flash drive.
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After setting the BIOS to allow for USB boot (see BIOS settings below), a blank cursor appears and then, after pressing enter, the phrase "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key."
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In your experience, is this an error with the drive formatting or the BIOS settings or something else altogether?
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Here are the steps I took to install FreeBSD onto the drive:
1. Created single partition using Mac OS X Disk Utility in MS-DOS (FAT) format with Master Boot Record partition scheme
2. Entered command "dd if=7.2-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.dmg of=/dev/disk1s1"
3. Noted that Mac OS X disk utility doesn't allow me to mount the new image now on the USB stick, and verification gives me the "invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block 000000" error"
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Here are the key BIOS settings:
1. USB drive set as first in the hard drive order
2. Disabled boot to optical devices, removable devices, and network
3. Enabled USB boot
4. Enabled boot USB devices first
5. USB mass storage emulation type - all fixed disc
6. Peripheral configuration: eSATA port disabled (was giving the "Adapter 1 no hard disk detected" error)
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Here is some detail on the hardware:
1. Motherboard and BIOS: Intel dx58so (w/ core i7 processor)
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Thank you
 
If you don't suffer from Tourette's, just drop the *beeps*. Thanks.
 
Burning a DVD image and booting off it should be the simpliest way to do so.
I'm afraid dd command doesn't write to the MBR..
You may also use a virtual machine to install the system to USB disc. I use VirtualBox, you may give it a try too.
 
Here's
how-to from miwi.bsdcrew.de. You've missed some steps:

1: clear your stick:
[cmd=]dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=1k count=1[/cmd]
2: make the USB-Stick bootable
[cmd=]bsdlabel -Bw da0 auto[/cmd]
3: create an UFS2 Filesystem with GEOM Lable “FreeBSD”
[cmd=]newfs -L FreeBSD /dev/da0a[/cmd]

I really don't know if these commands are available in OSX shell. But there's a chance because OSX open-source project Darwin is very closely related to BSD (Darwin is a BSD-derivate).
 
There are no bsdlabel on OSX AFAIK, disklabel will only deal with Apple partitions.
As seen here, you can use dd directly onto the flash drive. Beware it's a slow process and there doesn't seem to be a verbose switch on "dd".
[CMD=""]dd if=/path/to/freebsd.img of=/dev/diskidentifier bs=10240 conv=sync[/CMD]
 
mecano said:
There are no bsdlabel on OSX AFAIK, disklabel will only deal with Apple partitions.
As seen here, you can use dd directly onto the flash drive. Beware it's a slow process and there doesn't seem to be a verbose switch on "dd".
[CMD=""]dd if=/path/to/freebsd.img of=/dev/diskidentifier bs=10240 conv=sync[/CMD]
Click to expand...

It may go faster given a larger buffer. Don't use conv=sync. So really, do what the Handbook shows:
# dd if=/path/to/freebsd.img of=/dev/diskidentifier bs=64k
 
dd - You may watch the process on another console by sending SIGINFO (USR2 on a linux box) signal with kill command. Get the PID with ps.
Code: 
ps | grep dd
to get process ID
Code: 
kill -s SIGINFO (your dd process ID)

Read the manual for OSX version of dd.
 
Perhaps to clarify: you should not dd the image to the first partition of the USB, so drop "s1". This once gave me the "no bootable device" error.
 
SNK said:
Perhaps to clarify: you should not dd the image to the first partition of the USB, so drop "s1". This once gave me the "no bootable device" error.
Click to expand...

This I can confirm - tried to make a bootable usb device for freebsd 8.2 on Mac os X Lion as follows:

First check your current mounts to know the name and volume of your usb device:
[cmd=]$ mount[/cmd]
Unmount your usb device with this command:
[cmd=]$ diskutil unmount force /Volumes/yourdevice[/cmd]
Go to the folder where your image is and:
[cmd=]$ sudo dd if=FreeBSD-8.2-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/disk2 bs=64k[/cmd]
note: /dev/disk2s2 was valid according to my mount command, disk2 wil suffice.
64k is as mentioned above adaptable to get a better transfer speed.

To get some progress info, execute this in a second terminal:
[cmd=]sudo killall -INFO dd[/cmd]
 
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