FreeBSD + GPT + UEFI

Hello!

I tried installing Freebsd FreeBSD 10-BETA1 and the installation went well but when I reboot it just shows me BIOS settings. So my first step was to disable secure boot and enable CSM (all setting set to legacy mode) in the bios settings but nothing seems to help.

The disks were partitioned with guided partitioning using the whole disk, so the format is GPT.

The motherboard in question is an Asus MAaximus VI Impact.

Do I need to do something special during the installation and is this supposed to work?

Thanks!
 
Could it be that my BIOS assumes UEFI based on the fact that the disk is GPT? I can still boot the system by using a bootloader from USB but is less than ideal :)
 
Hi!

It seems nobody knows a solution. Actually it's the same problem with my FreeBSD installed on my SD memory card. My laptop has an ordinary BIOS and partitioned in MBR and is triple boot and works well. But when I want to boot it from my SD which has a GPT partitioning it stalls and can not find boot loader. I tried to install FreeBSD as MBR, but it gave me error and I couldn't change it.

Anyway, have you tried to change your BIOS to UEFI?
 
Changing the BIOS to UEFI will hardly solve anything since FreeBSD is the only system on the disk and cannot be booted in UEFI mode. Another idea is to use a UEFI bootloader like GRUB2 and then chainload into freebsd. Do you guys think that would work?
 
abbec said:
The disks were partitioned with guided partitioning using the whole disk, so the format is GPT.
If you boot the installer and choose LiveCD/DVD, what is the output of # gpart show?
 
You need to enable "Legacy Boot" in CSM. That's the only way FreeBSD will boot.
 
Another idea is to use a UEFI bootloader like GRUB2 and then chainload into freebsd. Do you guys think that would work?

Grub from ports does not work with zfs-ver5000, which is the default in FreeBSD 9+. If your filesystem is non-zfs or a lower version of it, then grub will work very nicely. Otherwise, you must compile from the bazaar source repository.
 
SirDice said:
You need to enable "Legacy Boot" in CSM. That's the only way FreeBSD will boot.

As I said in my original post I already did that. However, my suspicion is that this is ignored when it detects that the drive is GPT. Seen some reports of that behavior.
 
I read this on the UEFI wiki page under "Real Hardware Gotchas":

"Partitions not seen. When using GPT, FreeBSD will create a protective MBR. This MBR has one partition entry covering the whole disk. FreeBSD marks this partition active. This causes at least some UEFI implementations to ignore the GPT. To fix this the partition needs to be marked inactive."

Could this be the cause?
 
abbec said:
As I said in my original post I already did that. However, my suspicion is that this is ignored when it detects that the drive is GPT. Seen some reports of that behavior.
Not on my machines. They boot perfectly fine with GPT, as long as I use legacy boot.
 
This is a continual aggravation, especially for people who like to monkey around with (very) old hardware and operating systems. GRUB2 (and some incantations of GRUB1) can work, and I've found it is possible to finesse everything, and tweak it just right to get it working, with hassle. There's always something I forget when I'm in the process of switching things around, and mixing and matching GPT aware and unaware systems. In the end, I just dedicated the entire hard disk to FreeBSD, made dedicated USB boot sticks for other newer things, and keep junker hardware around for the really old OSes.

Haiku-OS on a stick is as fast as can be, especially for net browsing. One of these days, I'll completely dispense with hard drives altogether, and just carry a big pocketful of USB sticks.

The other day, I used FreeBSD 6 inside of Virtualbox, running on a FreeBSD-9.1 USB stick. No problems.
 
The output of gpart show is:

Code:
=>       34  468862061  ada0  GPT  (224G)
         34          6        - free -  (3.0K)
         40        128     1  freebsd-boot  (64K)
        168  461373304     2  freebsd-ufs  (220G)
  461373472    7488622     3  freebsd-swap  (3.6G)
  468862094          1        - free -  (512B)
 
abbec said:
I read this on the UEFI wiki page under "Real Hardware Gotchas":

"Partitions not seen. When using GPT, FreeBSD will create a protective MBR. This MBR has one partition entry covering the whole disk. FreeBSD marks this partition active. This causes at least some UEFI implementations to ignore the GPT. To fix this the partition needs to be marked inactive."

Could this be the cause?

Still think this might have been the cause but, I reinstalled with MBR (since I do not really need GPT anyway :) ) and that worked perfectly!

Thanks for all the help guys!
 
abbec said:
Still think this might have been the cause but, I reinstalled with MBR (since I do not really need GPT anyway :) ) and that worked perfectly!

Thanks for all the help guys!

I sometimes think that might of been the case with mine as well, but I cannot test without significant work, as I don't have any other laptop drives around. But when the opportunity presents itself again I will definitely be trying disabling the active flag.
 
"Partitions not seen. When using GPT, FreeBSD will create a protective MBR. This MBR has one partition entry covering the whole disk. FreeBSD marks this partition active. This causes at least some UEFI implementations to ignore the GPT. To fix this the partition needs to be marked inactive."
I had the same problem using GPT partitions on an Asus z87-ws motherboard with FreeBSD 10-RCx. I had to enable/disable the active flag after sysinstall ends to make it work.

gpart set -a active adaX
 
gug said:
"Partitions not seen. When using GPT, FreeBSD will create a protective MBR. This MBR has one partition entry covering the whole disk. FreeBSD marks this partition active. This causes at least some UEFI implementations to ignore the GPT. To fix this the partition needs to be marked inactive."
I had the same problem using GPT partitions on an Asus z87-ws motherboard with FreeBSD 10-RCx. I had to enable/disable the active flag after sysinstall ends to make it work.

gpart set -a active adaX

gpart set -a active adaX worked for me. Thank you!
 
bump

gpart set -a active ada0 didn't work well for me; actually nothing at all changed (u32vj asus laptop). Shame it is.
Installation to MBR was painfully slow and disk is painfully (again) slow when using MBR, which should be the result of 4k aligned disk (but I didn't expect to non-aligned disk work 5 times slower than aligned..).
Okay.
Will test with proper hdd setup tomorrow, then..
 
gug said:
"Partitions not seen. When using GPT, FreeBSD will create a protective MBR. This MBR has one partition entry covering the whole disk. FreeBSD marks this partition active. This causes at least some UEFI implementations to ignore the GPT. To fix this the partition needs to be marked inactive."
I had the same problem using GPT partitions on an Asus z87-ws motherboard with FreeBSD 10-RCx. I had to enable/disable the active flag after sysinstall ends to make it work.

gpart set -a active adaX

Thanks @gug! This allowed me to boot FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE on a ASRock C2550D4I using GPT.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
gug said:
"Partitions not seen. When using GPT, FreeBSD will create a protective MBR. This MBR has one partition entry covering the whole disk. FreeBSD marks this partition active. This causes at least some UEFI implementations to ignore the GPT. To fix this the partition needs to be marked inactive."
I had the same problem using GPT partitions on an Asus z87-ws motherboard with FreeBSD 10-RCx. I had to enable/disable the active flag after sysinstall ends to make it work.

gpart set -a active adaX
This also worked for me :)

Great !
FreeBSD is running like a charm :D
 
I want to hug this thread. Solved several hours of frustration with a new Asus H87I-PLUS motherboard as well. Thanks everybody!!
 
gug said:
"Partitions not seen. When using GPT, FreeBSD will create a protective MBR. This MBR has one partition entry covering the whole disk. FreeBSD marks this partition active. This causes at least some UEFI implementations to ignore the GPT. To fix this the partition needs to be marked inactive."
I had the same problem using GPT partitions on an Asus z87-ws motherboard with FreeBSD 10-RCx. I had to enable/disable the active flag after sysinstall ends to make it work.

gpart set -a active adaX

Thanks a lot! This command saved my life after migrate to an Asus Z97-A motherboard.
 
gug said:
"Partitions not seen. When using GPT, FreeBSD will create a protective MBR. This MBR has one partition entry covering the whole disk. FreeBSD marks this partition active. This causes at least some UEFI implementations to ignore the GPT. To fix this the partition needs to be marked inactive."
I had the same problem using GPT partitions on an Asus z87-ws motherboard with FreeBSD 10-RCx. I had to enable/disable the active flag after sysinstall ends to make it work.

gpart set -a active adaX

This worked for me too on Asus H81M-K motherboard with no legacy boot. (I spent days searching for a way to boot FreeBSD 10). thanks
 
redjupiter said:
gug said:
"Partitions not seen. When using GPT, FreeBSD will create a protective MBR. This MBR has one partition entry covering the whole disk. FreeBSD marks this partition active. This causes at least some UEFI implementations to ignore the GPT. To fix this the partition needs to be marked inactive."
I had the same problem using GPT partitions on an Asus z87-ws motherboard with FreeBSD 10-RCx. I had to enable/disable the active flag after sysinstall ends to make it work.

gpart set -a active adaX

This worked for me too on Asus H81M-K motherboard with no legacy boot. (I spent days searching for a way to boot FreeBSD 10). thanks


This also solved my problem installing on an Asus Sabertooth X79, so thanks :beergrin
 
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