USB Stick install fails on HP Pavilion

E

ebike

Hi All,

I am having a lot of difficulty booting a USB Stick on this machine. I have tried Linux and even NetBSD installs, and they work just fine, but the FreeBSD image for a USB stick will not boot.

I wonder if it is because I think this machine might expect a 32bit UEFI boot. Can anyone help here? I have tried all the USB images I can find in the Downloads page and none work. (even tried 32bit images) I have been using Linux "DD" to image the sticks.

Cheers,
B.
 
I did:
sudo dd if=FreeBSD-11.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/sdb bs=2M

Actually I tried on another USB stick and this time it booted but it said NetBSD not FreeBSD and then booted to the command line, it did not run any installer ..
(and yes, it definitely was the above freshly downloaded image, I did it twice to be sure)

EDIT: Ahh, it was booting the hard drive and ignoring the USB stick even when I went into the bios and selected it to boot ..
 
ebike said:
I did:
sudo dd if=FreeBSD-11.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/sdb bs=2M
Click to expand...
Ok, that's good. One of the most common mistakes is to write to a partition instead of the disk itself.
 
Been doing Linux for 20 yrs, so don't make that mistake often. Still no clue as to why it doesn't boot ...
 
32Bit EFI is not supported so if this is a Z37xx laptop then you might need to boot via Grub for the 32bit UEFI
 
It is a Desktop PC, but like I said will have to wait till I get home to give you the model details.
If it is 32Bit UEFI, where do I find info on how to boot via Grub ...
 
My HP Pavilion desktop info:
Name: P6-2175a
cpu: i3-2120
bios: cup_716.rom

That link you gave above wasn't that helpful. I got the .efi file and mounted a FreeBSD ISO on the loop device. I then had a look in the /boot directory to see if there
was an "efi" directory to place the file in, but there was not ... need some help here on building a new ISO with 32bit UEFI support ..

.. if indeed that is the issue ..
 
With a Sandy Bridge CPU you should be fine. 64bit UEFI works there.
Maybe you have an issue with EFI video output? Do you get to loader screen or nothing at all?
 
Nothing at all, does not see the USB stick as a bootable device.

.. yet, as I say other distros linux/bsd boot fine .. (on the same stick too )
 
How about you try FreeBSD 10.3. With that version there are separate UEFI and Regular BIOS install files. Try the Non-UEFI version to see if that is your issue.

If so install 10.3 and run freebsd-update to bring it up to FreeBSD 11.
 
You could also try FreeBSD 11 -but use the 32Bit images. They do not contain EFI either.

Have you looked at the BIOS and tried messing with the UEFI/CSM settings?
 
Hi, yes I had tried the 32bit images, they did not boot either, I also played with all the bios settings I can think of, not many, as it is a very basic bios ..
I will try the 10.3 image tonight ... thanks for the suggestions.
 
One more thing to look at is the USB memstick LED. See if the USB stick is blinking like its booting up, but with no video.
That might help to isolate the problem.
Any chance you have installed a video card and the motherboard has onboard video?
 
Yes, the Stick does blink, like it is trying to boot ..

And Yes, I have installed a video card, but I had disabled the on-board video in the bios.
Does FreeBSD not like some video cards then? I will turn on the on-board video and try that instead ..
 
Not so much that FreeBSD doesn't like video cards. It ignores the disabled 'video BIOS setting' and uses the video on-board.
The Video card will appear as vga1 and onboard video as vga0.
This is just an educated guess. My APU2 box doesn't have a vga connector but FreeBSD thinks it has video out.
I see similar things with multiple video output motherboards. Favor one video port over the other.

For an xorg desktop you can specify which monitor to use.
 
Hello guys,
I have same issue with (HP Compaq 6200 Pro Small Form Factor). USB stick is blinking like its booting up, but with no video appeared and monitor turn off. note that video card is built-in on board, below System specifications:
  • Processor: Intel Core i5-2400
  • Chipset: Intel Q65 Express
  • Memory: 8GB 1333 MHz DDR3 SDRAM
  • Network interface: 3x Intel Gigabit Ethernet
  • Storage: Samsung SSD 850 120GB
  • Graphics: Integrated Intel HD
I have tried ubuntu and windows10 with UEFI booting and working it's working fine. only issue with FreeBSD loader on above PC. Could anyone solve this issue? Thanks
 
Phishfry said:
Not so much that FreeBSD doesn't like video cards. It ignores the disabled 'video BIOS setting' and uses the video on-board.
The Video card will appear as vga1 and onboard video as vga0.
This is just an educated guess. My APU2 box doesn't have a vga connector but FreeBSD thinks it has video out.
I see similar things with multiple video output motherboards. Favor one video port over the other.

For an xorg desktop you can specify which monitor to use.
Click to expand...
Hi,

I tried on the motherboard video, but the same issue, it just won't boot the USB stick, flashes the stick LED a few times, then goes onto booting the hard drive ...
(this is after selecting to boot the stick in the bios)

There is something wrong with these images ..

PS: The 10.3 image does not boot either (non UEFI)
 
Man, this is the most difficult install I have had in my life .... and I have installed hundreds of Linux boxes ..
Giving up on the USB stick, I plonked an ISO onto a CD and booted up a USB connected CD drive.

That at least booted, I hit ENTER for multiuser mode, it started booting, then reset, then booted again ... continues in an endless loop ..
What gives? It can't be this hard ......

I tried single-usermode, safe-mode and any other mode offered, all the same result.
Looks like I just can't install FreeBSD on this machine .... oh well, looks like NetBSD it is ...
 
Yesterday I purchased USB-TO-Serial cable to try FreeBSD image for serial installation and the surprise it has been installed without any issue. So the issue only VGA image which is disable VGA with first boot fro USB stick. Hope this will help you guys.
 
Is there a HOWTO somewhere on installing via serial?
Not sure what you mean't by your second sentence regarding VGA would you mind making that statement clearer .. thanks.
 
The serial cable would be a last resort in my opinion. I use them on my headless machines.
Well if you had luck with the CD then I think you can get it going. Can you get to the loader screen with the Beastie logo?
If so you can pipe in some useful settings.
I would seriously consider using no added VGA card in the computer. Your cpu has Intel HD2000 video built in. Added video is just another complexity.

With that you would use Beastie menu and pick #3 and this drops you to a loader prompt where you feed in options. Like this:
kern.vty=sc
boot
This will change you to the system console, an older fallback console to the now default vt console.
https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sc&sektion=4
https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=vt&sektion=4
 
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