Boot USB memstick with MBR (WAS: Re: [RFC] Deprecation and removal of the drm2 driver)

From: Johannes Lundberg <johalun0_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 23 May 2018 13:20:42 +0100
On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 12:41 PM, Philip Homburg <pch-fbsd-1_at_u-1.phicoh.com>
wrote:

> >It's not that hard create a mbr based usb-stick. Far easier than to find a
> >CD burner.
>
> 'Not hard' means
> - undocumented. Or at least, if you start with release notes and install
>   instructions you won't find it.
> - Probably only works if you already have a FreeBSD system.
>
> And if it is indeed 'not hard', why not just generate such an image as
> part
> of the release build?
>

As someone who burn memsticks weekly and don't own a cd r/w, I agree.
It seems there's no way to download an .iso or .img image that will boot
from usb on legacy bios. This is bad and should be fixed.

We shouldn't expect people that want to experiment with FreeBSD on non-UEFI
hardware to already have a FreeBSD installation where they can prepare boot
media... They shouldn't have to.

File a bug report in bugzilla and try to poke the right people (I don't
know who is working in this area).
I guess the options are, either we make a hybrid .img that'll boot off both
(maybe not that easy if it requires changes to boot assembly code) or just
add a -legacy-bios.img to the image generation scripts.

This is important since it's about lowering the threshold of bringing
people to FreeBSD and giving a good (i.e. working) first impression.


>
> >I believe boot/loader.conf is something you have to create, it is not
> there
> >by default.
>
> That's not the problem. The problem is that it lives on a separate zpool
> that
> is lost at every reboot.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-current_at_freebsd.org mailing list
> https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscribe_at_freebsd.org"
>
Received on Wed May 23 2018 - 10:21:25 UTC

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Wed May 19 2021 - 11:41:16 UTC