Trying to change boot drivers on new install media

M

MikeL

I have a Dell R730 I'm doing a new FreeBSD14 install on.
I made a DVD from the .iso image and booted it. During the bsdinstall, I get the error "MFI0: Failed to get command".
I did get a running system, but I also did continue to see this error occassionally on the console of the installed system.

Doing some googling, I find that this is an issue with the Dell Perc/mfi, and that the fix is to change over to mrsas/CAM - simply editing a few files in /etc/. (https://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/users/2014-July/128703.html)
I've made these changes on the installed system, and the system seems fine now, however, I'm worried that I may have a ticking time bomb as I did see that error at install time - it's possible there's data errors in the installed system. I've re-installed since, and deselected all options to minimize the install files, but did not achieve an install without that error.

So what I'm trying to do is to modify the installer disk in advance.
I've downloaded the disk1 .iso on a win11 system, and used balenaetcher to write it to an external USB HD.
I assumed I'd see a UFS filesystem that I could mount and modify these files, then install from that HD.
I moved that USB HD onto the FreeBSD box, and when I plug it in, on the console I get
GEOM: da0: the secondary GPT table is corrupt or invalid.
GEOM: da0: using the primary only -- recovery suggested.
As it appears the primary is ok, since it's a one-shot deal, after I've gotten through it once, I won't be using it again, so I'm gonna ignore this.
I am able to mount -t msdosfs /dev/da0p2 /media, but there's only a single file /EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi.
Trying to mount /dev/da0p1 as msdosfs gives "Invalid argument", and mounting as ufs gives "Input/output error".
Trying to mount /dev/da0 as msdosfs again gives "Invalid argument", and as ufs gives "No such file or directory" although thi special file is present in /dev.

Anyone able to help me with this? Do I need to worry about that warning? Am I simply barking up the wrong tree?
Thanks!
 
MikeL said:
I'm worried that I may have a ticking time bomb as I did see that error at install time
Click to expand...
I think it'll be fine.
MikeL said:
I've re-installed since, and deselected all options to minimize the install files, but did not achieve an install without that error.
Click to expand...
If you really want to redo the install without the error, boot the install media and drop to loader at the boot menu. Set the hints on loader prompt and enter boot to boot the install media. That will apply the mfi(4) to mrsas(4) switch during the installer. At the end of the installer it will ask if you want to make some final additional changes. Do that and edit /boot/device.hints before finishing the install and rebooting.
 
Maybe you should mount /dev/da0p1 as cd9660 or udf.
Because *-disc1.iso and/or *-dvd1.iso could be used by non-UEFI (aka BIOS) systems, they must be recognized as El Torito bootable CD, if I recall correctly.

Maybe using *-memstick.img instead of *.iso would be more straightforward to use with USB memsticks and USB HDD/SSDs. But it does not contain packages.
 
Followup - yesterday after entering that note, I went to actually boot that media, I went to shell, and I got an iso9660 read-only mount. Doing mount -u -w gave no error, but had no effect. This give credence to T-Aoki's suggestion of mounting as cd9660.

So, as suggested, I tried mounting the install HD as cd9660, then udf - no go, same sort of errors.

So yesterday I followed SirDice's suggestion, and was able to get through a clean install, and a bootable system with the proper drivers. I've made a page with my detailed steps https://www.vintners.net/~mikel/howto/fbsdnewinstall14.html

Thank you all!

(P.S. I still can't find a button in the forum to mark this as solved.)
 
You go to the menu on the top right, select "edit thread" and then select a prefix. One of them is "Solved".
 
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