Unable to boot FreeBSD 13.1 - possible BIOS problem

I have just installed FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE on a single GPT partition of a 4TB disk in a Lenovo ThinkCentre M92 and it won't boot.
The disk is seen by the BIOS and marked as the first bootable device but is ignored at boot up.

Any ideas about whether such a combination ought to work?
Could it be GPT problem, or is the disk too big? I have managed to boot FreeBSD on this system using other disks.

Having just tried booting this disk externally via USB I get an error loading boot loader.

What can I check to identify the root cause?
 
Afaik FreeBSD UEFI loader still has no partition selection. So it tries to boot the first „matching“ partition it find.
You have the EFI partition directly on the 4 TB disc or on another disc?
 
After several hours of trial and error, I managed to install Linux Mint on this disk.

It does boot up to a Grub menu, so I was wondering if I could get FreeBSD working on this disk by reducing the the Linux partition, creating a freebsd-ufs partition and editing the grub menu...

Any thoughts?

Not sure how to reduce the size of the Linux partition though...
 
it won't boot
Please help us to help you by providing the details of what you did exactly. Is it UEFI or BIOS boot? Did you use the partitioning scheme suggested by installer? AFAIR with BIOS/GPT separate freebsd-boot partition is required, as well as installing the bootcode using gpart.
 
Please help us to help you by providing the details of what you did exactly. Is it UEFI or BIOS boot? Did you use the partitioning scheme suggested by installer? AFAIR with BIOS/GPT separate freebsd-boot partition is required, as well as installing the bootcode using gpart.
The BIOS would not recognise the disk as a bootable device after installing FreeBSD on it. I used GPT partitioning, also installed on UFS and ZFS partitions, neither of which provided a bootable device to the system.
 
Is secure boot turned off?
Not sure what to look for, although I did manage to install Linux Mint on the system....

If I simply

gpart destroy -F ada0
gpart add -t efi ada0


should I expect to see some msg when trying to boot from ada0 ?
 
After several hours of trial and error, I managed to install Linux Mint on this disk.

It does boot up to a Grub menu, so I was wondering if I could get FreeBSD working on this disk by reducing the the Linux partition, creating a freebsd-ufs partition and editing the grub menu...

You don't have to do anything if you have a working Linux with grub. Running update-grub in Linux will scan for and find FreeBSD and create a grub entry for you. If not, the entry in grub.cfg is trivial.
 
You don't have to do anything if you have a working Linux with grub. Running update-grub in Linux will scan for and find FreeBSD and create a grub entry for you. If not, the entry in grub.cfg is trivial.
In that case I need to reduce the Linux partition considerably but am unsure how to do this. Would I be able to do this using FreeBSD booted from an alternative device?
 
In that case I need to reduce the Linux partition considerably but am unsure how to do this. Would I be able to do this using FreeBSD booted from an alternative device?

I think so. update-grub's scan goes over all block devices in the system IIRC.
 
Why not just have an EFI setup? The device seems to have UEFI support, sounds to me like the best solution.
Please explain exactly what I need to do to boot FreeBSD from my 4TB disk.

I can boot FreeBSD from alternative media and apply commands manually.
 
After further investigation, I found I could install and boot the latest pfSense on the 4TB disk, but it would only work on a Lenovo ThinkCentre M73 which has the same form factor as the M92, but the same disk would not boot in the M92.

Needless to say, I have no idea what the problem could be.
 
Not sure what to look for, although I did manage to install Linux Mint on the system....

If I simply

gpart destroy -F ada0
gpart add -t efi ada0


should I expect to see some msg when trying to boot from ada0 ?
Get into the computer's BIOS to turn Secure Boot off... it's NOT the same thing as booting into the installer, and it comes before GRUB comes up. One thing you could try is rEFInd bootloader instead of GRUB...
 
Get into the computer's BIOS to turn Secure Boot off... it's NOT the same thing as booting into the installer, and it comes before GRUB comes up. One thing you could try is rEFInd bootloader instead of GRUB...
I can't find any mention of Secure Boot in the BIOS. In any case, I was able to install and boot Linux Mint on this disk in this machine, so I really can't figure out what could be the problem.
 
I can't find any mention of Secure Boot in the BIOS. In any case, I was able to install and boot Linux Mint on this disk in this machine, so I really can't figure out what could be the problem.
Check the documentation for your motherboard. Depending on what mobo model you have, the BIOS might only present you with an option to disable/enable legacy boot (or UEFI boot), and that's it. Also, that option may be hidden somewhere, and you have to navigate to it.

I have Asus and Gigabyte mobos, they have different-looking BIOSes, and I sometimes had to ask Google where exactly to find the secure boot option in those particular mobos.
 
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