usb boot failing on thinkpad X201

ruckus

ruckus

Cross posting this from the BSD thread since I'm not sure which thread is more relevant...

So I just got a Thinkpad X201, and I'd like to run FreeBSD on it.

I changed the boot order to put USB at the top, and disabled quick boot.

I then used unetbootin to create a usb drive that I could install the OS from.

However, when I boot the laptop it just tries to go into the Windows 7 setup. I tried hitting F12 and manually specifying the USB drive, and it still just ends up at the windows setup.

Is there something I'm missing? I'm kind of getting worried... I tried both the unetbootin preset for FreeBSD in the drop down menu, as well as the .iso from their website (8.0-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso), neither worked.

As in nothing, nada. I hit F12, select the usb drive, and end up back at the same screen I'd normally get, asking me to set up windows.
 
Use that image: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO-IMAGES-i386/8.0/8.0-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img

... and dd(1) it onto the pendrive: # dd < 8.0-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img > /dev/da0 bs=8M
 
One other question: My processor is 64 bit (an Intel i5)... should I be using the i386, or the ia64 image?
 
Thanks... one other question... Does dd normally just hang, even when it's done, if you hadn't specified a progress bar, or will it drop back to a command prompt?

(I'm on OSX, and I just entered dd if=~/Documents/Downloads/8.0-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img of=/dev/disk2...

Obviously I'll need to change the image, but is there something else I should be doing? It seems to have been writing much longer than it should take to write an ~800 meg file over USB2.0
 
Err sorry, it just finished, disregard that. I can't find an "edit" button, probably it's righti n front of my sleep deprived face. But thanks for the advice, I appreciate it.
 
Well, if you use sysutils/sdd (I'm pretty sure there will be win32 & linux builds of it) you can specify -pg which writes a period (.) to stdout for every block written. Our dd(1) doesn't seem to have any equivalent. I dunno about any others.
 
I just got a Thinkpad x201 too, and I also want to install FreeBSD on it. But I now don't know whether FreeBSD supports Intel i3 processer. How about your Thinkpad x201, did you install FreeBSD on it successfully?

Thanks.
 
May be the notebook's motherboard can not support

I have a thinkpad T400, I also met this problem. My usb-disk's size is 8g. The unetbootin does not work either. I search some solutions. I think may be some PC or Notebook's motherboard can not support the u-disk which size is above 4g. I tried to install in a 1g u-disk, it works alright.
Hope can help you.
 
For the users of X-series thinkpads (x200, x60, etc..) remember that you can use usb cd/dvd drives and then install FreeBSD as normal.
However it might come up with an error (just before installing) saying "cannot find cdrom", in which case, in the FreeBSD installer, select Options and press spacebar on "rescan devices" a couple of times.
 
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