Solved ThinkPad X220 boot problem

B

balanga

I've just installed FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE on a ThinkPad T500 and it boots up ok, but the same disk does not boot up on a ThinkPad X220.
ISTR that when running BSDINSTALL on the X220 it does mention something about a BIOS bug for which FreeBSD installs a workaround. I'm not sure about the specifics, but is it possible to apply this fix to an existing installation?
 
I found a thread which mentions the problem here, but can't really figure out what I need to do. My system is using GPT but not UEFI. IIUC the problem may be related to /boot/pmbr or not having an active flag set...
 
Eventually decided to run bsdinstall to reinstall FreeBSD on the X220, and there is actually a prompt to allow you to apply a 'workaround' for this BIOS bug, and the the disk boots up OK.

Just wondered if anyone knew of any way to apply this 'workaround' independently of bsdinstall()?
 
The normal thing to do when having these kind of problems with a machine is to look for bios / uefi updates for the machine, and if any are available, install those (ok, the latest one) and see if that fixes the problem.
You might know this, and might even have tried it; unfortunately you didn't write anything about it in this thread so we don't know if you tried upgrading the bios.
 
The latest BIOS (v1.46) is intalled and looking through the mailing list it appears that any fixes suggested did not work.

What I can't figure out is what the install workaround does... Clearly it does fix the problem somehow because I do have a GPT disk which did boot OK because I used bsdinstall() initially to install FreeBSD and there is a prompt which asks, after noting that installation is being done on a ThinkPad X220, and do I want to apply a workaround to overcome the BIOS boot bug.

I looked at gptboot() hoping to see some specific X220 option but didn't see anything, but will probably try reinstalling it in the absence of any other option.
 
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