Solved Unable to boot 15.1-RELEASE memstick installer

[samjenk]

On a Framework 13 laptop with AMD Ryzen 7640 processor, I'm having trouble getting the FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE memstick installer to boot. Each time I attempt to boot off of it, the laptop presents the error:

"EFI USB Device (USB Disk 3.0) boot failed."

The memstick installer was copied to a USB 3 thumbdrive using the Gnome Disks utility using the "restore disk image" feature. Before doing so, I confirmed that the memstick .img file's hash matched the value given in CHECKSUM.SHA512-FreeBSD-15.1-RELEASE-amd64. Further, I was able to boot off of this installer on another, older machine, and install 15.1-RELEASE to it. The thumbdrive has a male USB-A connector capable of USB 3.0, and is attached to the machine through a Framework USB-A to USB-C expansion card.

I've since tried:

(1) Moving the USB-A to USB-C expansion card to each of the four expansion slots, inserting the thumbdrive with the installer, and attempting to boot.

(2) Imaging the thumbdrive again with the Disks utility and attempting to boot from it.

(3) Imaging the thumbdrive by copying the memstick installer .img file to it with the dd(1) utility, and attempting to boot from it.

(4) Imaging a second USB thumbdrive with the memstick installer, and booting from that. This produced the same error as above for the first thumbdrive.

(5) Disabling UEFI secure boot on the laptop (as described here), and attempting to boot from the thumbdrive.

(6) Updating the laptop's firmware from 3.17 to 3.18 and attempting to boot from the thumbdrive. I received the same error as above.

I appreciate any suggestions or insights you have, thanks!

 

[samjenk]

I found a procedure on the Framework forums that got the 15.1-RELEASE memstick installer booting. Documenting overview here for posterity.

1. Download installer image, verify integrity, and image a thumbdrive with it.
2. Shut down the Framework, insert the thumbdrive.
3. Boot the laptop, pressing F2 to enter the firmware configuration page.
3. On the configuration page, select Advanced Boot.
4. Disable secure boot.
5. In the menu to select which boot loader file to load, navigate to the boot64.efi file on the thumbdrive, and select "add to trusted boot loaders" (or equivalent).
6. Press F10 to exit Advanced Boot and save changes.
7. Restart the laptop, pressing F12 to get to the screen to select the boot disk.
8. Select the thumbdrive from the boot disk menu.
9. Confirm that the FreeBSD installer boots.

It looks like you can still boot the installer with Secure Boot re-enabled after this procedure, so I might try steps 4--6 again after I've installed 15.1-RELEASE to have the firmware trust the boot loader installed on the system.