Re: Memstick image differences between 8.x and 9.x

On 9 October 2011 13:20, Thomas K. <fwd_at_gothschlampen.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 08, 2011 at 07:28:55PM -0600, Warren Block wrote:
> > On Sun, 9 Oct 2011, Matt Thyer wrote:
> > >On Oct 9, 2011 11:04 AM, "Nathan Whitehorn" <nwhitehorn_at_freebsd.org>
> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> On 10/08/11 19:25, Matt Thyer wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >There is also the interesting question of actually installing to GPT on
> the hard disk, which is the default in 9.0. Does this not work on some
> systems? If so, do we want to blacklist
> > >them and use a different default partition scheme? Can we identify
> systems that violate regular PC boot standards and reject GPT? Any data on
> any of these points would be appreciated.
> > >>
> > >I don't think there have been any reports of failure to boot properly
> formatted GPT yet.
> >
> > Lenovo T420S and T520, from the links above.  Install GPT on the
> > hard drive, try to boot.
> >
> > http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=26304
> > http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=26759
> > http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=98078
>
> As I used parted from Linux to fix the alternate GPT, i.e. put it not at
> the
> end of the image data but on the end of the disk, and it still did not
> appear
> in the boot device list, the Acer AX3960 should probably be on the list
> as well.
>
> Being a Core i7 2600k system maybe 6 months old, it's rather recent
> hardware,
> but doesn't boot from the memstick image.
>
>
> Regards,
> Thomas
>

Failure to boot the FreeBSD 9.0-BETA{2|3} memstick images does not indicate
a problem with a PCs BIOS/UEFI as these images are not properly formatted.

If we were able to come up with examples of BIOS/UEFI that cannot boot from
GPT partitioned volumes there would not be a problem as long as bsdinstall
still supports partitioning volumes with MSDOS/MBR partitioning schemes.

The big problem is being able to launch the installation process to start
with which is yet another reason to have the memstick image non-GPT even if
you could work out a script/kludge etc to be able to write a properly
formatted GPT memstick.

The solution to this issue is obvious.