USB Stick install fails on HP Pavilion

Ok, I can drop into the loader, but It does not allow me to type "kern.vty=sc" however boot and a heap of other commands are there
What am I meant to do in the shell that will allow me to boot without this cycling ..

I pulled the graphics card out and tried to boot of the on-board card and all I get is black screen .. the CD disk is accessed but nothing on screen ..

So in essence:
On external Card: Boots to beastie, but cycles
On internal card: Black screen
 
You might need to add 'set' to your command.

set kern.vty=sc
boot


Some other video settings to try before switching to sc:

set gop 0
boot


set mode 0
boot


set mode 3
boot
 
Phishfry None of those video options helped, the boot still resets & loops ... and that is only on external video card. The motherboard video card still shows blackscreen ..
Barakah I will try the serial install with the modified CD ISO, but I suspect it might still have the same issue and do a reset cycle ... so not confident it will help.
 
What are the connectors involved here. Does your motherboard have more than 1 video jack. Perhaps like VGA and HDMI.?
Also what is the video card using? VGA only?
What does your display use as its normal operating size on other OS? For instance 1366x768...

If you plan on trying headless I think the bottom of this page has the loader settings I use.
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/serialconsole-setup.html
(I have only used serial-serial console cable with this.)

Most computers don't have serial console redirect in the BIOS. Mostly servers and embedded use.
This method should still work without serial redirection but you won't see the bios screens over serial..
I modified my FreeBSD installer memstick to add my serial settings to
/boot/loader.conf
Code:
boot_multicons="YES"
boot_serial="YES"
comconsole_speed="115200"
console="comconsole,vidconsole"

This 'serial console on a regular box' is really a hard way to get this working. Are you sure you have scoured the BIOS?
Just tonight I converted Win8 Toshiba laptop to FreeBSD. I had to go thru the bios many many time to find the trick.
In this box it was "Secure Boot" that needed to be disabled that then allowed me to change from UEFI to CSM in the BIOS.
This was the key to installing on a Toshiba C55D with AMD A8. So sometimes the settings are hidden until you disable something else.
 
My motherboard has VGA and HDMI, I had removed the external video card and was connecting to the HDMI, maybe I will get an old VGA monitor I have lying around and try that.
I can't tell you about the resolutions, as I am at work.

Yes, i have scoured the BIOS, there is very little settings to do with booting on these machines, I did look for "Secure Boot" awhile ago, and it is not there.
I just can't work out why I can boot any other os like Ubuntu, ArchLinux, and even NetBSD, with a USB stick and graphics card even, yet it can't boot FreeBSD.

I will try a simple VGA monitor and boot from CDROM, before I go down the serial boot path.
 
Ok, I have tried the VGA connector as well. I can get to the Beastie menu when I boot The CDROM drive connected to to USB via an adapter, NOT the sata bus!
However I get the same issue, I select either multiuser boot or single, it starts loading some stuff, then reboots and cycles again ..

It look like the graphics adapter has nothing to do with this issue ..

Maybe it is an HP secure boot thing that is causing the reset, but I see absolutely nothing in the bios to turn it off ..

Update: I made some changes to the bios and now it just gets stuck in the boot: see attached link.
Al5H5

EDIT: I hate it when forums don't allow embedded pictures, anyone know a good site?
 
Just an idea .. since I have NetBSD installed on my hard-drive and booting, is there a way I can install FreeBSD on top of it, that might be a way around this issue and get me up and running.
(e.g. like installing the root file system over top of NetBSD's, .. apart from /boot that is ;) )
 
I can't even do a serial install, as this machine does not have one .... does the bootloader support usb->serial on that side as well?
(then I could do two usb-> serial adapters wired null-modem)
 
I seem to be having a nice conversation with my self ...

I have had some success, I managed to install a 10.3 USB image (non uefi) and as long as I selected UFS filesystem and MBR booting, the hard-drive now boots.
(I tried doing the root-ZFS thing, but although it installed ok, the hard drive would not boot.)

So now I am in, I am trying to upgrade to 11.* with freebsd-update, but when I run it, it says "failed.. no mirrors remaining, giving up"
Can someone help me with this one?, I am getting bored with my own conversation.
 
Internet is fine. The problem likely is that I don't know the correct upgrade command:
When I tried
Code:
freebsd-upgrade -r 11 upgrade
is when it failed...

I can't seem to find the correct process anywhere ..

When I did
Code:
freebsd-upgrade fetch update
that worked, but just updated 10.3 ..
 
Brilliant! .. downloading thousands of patches while we talk.

By the way, any idea why the root-over-ZFS did not boot? I would have preferred a ZFS file-system instead of UFS ..
 
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