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| How to install FreeBSD on x86 GNU GRUB payload |
This page on the FreeBSD website shows how to create a bootable USB drive for installing FreeBSD. Use the dd on that page.
Prepare the USB drive (in NetBSD)
This page on the NetBSD website shows how to create a NetBSD bootable USB drive from within NetBSD itself. You should use the dd method documented there; you can use this with any ISO, including FreeBSD.
Prepare the USB drive (in LibertyBSD or OpenBSD)
If you downloaded your ISO on a LibertyBSD or OpenBSD system, here is how to create the bootable FreeBSD USB drive:
Connect the USB drive. Check dmesg:
dmesg | tail
Check to confirm which drive it is, for example, if you think its sd3:
disklabel sd3
Check that it wasn't automatically mounted. If it was, unmount it. For example:
doas umount /dev/sd3i
dmesg told you what device it is. Overwrite the drive, writing the FreeBSD installer to it with dd. For example:
doas dd if=freebsd.img of=/dev/rsdXc bs=1M; sync
You should now be able to boot the installer from your USB drive. Continue reading, for information about how to do that.
Prepare the USB drive (in GNU+Linux)
If you downloaded your ISO on a GNU+Linux system, here is how to create the bootable FreeBSD USB drive:
Connect the USB drive. Check dmesg:
dmesg
Check lsblk to confirm which drive it is:
lsblk
Check that it wasn't automatically mounted. If it was, unmount it. For example:
sudo umount /dev/sdX\*
umount /dev/sdX\*
dmesg told you what device it is. Overwrite the drive, writing your distro ISO to it with dd. For example:
sudo dd if=freebsd.img of=/dev/sdX bs=8M; sync
dd if=freebsd.img of=/dev/sdX bs=8M; sync
You should now be able to boot the installer from your USB drive. Continue reading, for information about how to do that.
Installing FreeBSD without full disk encryption
Press C in GRUB to access the command line:
grub> kfreebsd (usb0,gpt3)/boot/kernel/kernel
grub> set FreeBSD.vfs.mountfrom=ufs:/dev/da1p3\
grub> boot
It will start booting into the FreeBSD installer. Follow the normal process for installing FreeBSD.
Installing FreeBSD with full disk encryption
TODO
Booting
TODO
Configuring Grub
TODO
Troubleshooting
According to the Libreboot project at a time when it was still fully free, most of the issues occur when using coreboot's 'text mode' instead of the coreboot framebuffer. This mode is useful for booting payloads like memtest86+ which expect text-mode, but for FreeBSD, accodring to Libreboot at the time, it can be problematic when they are trying to switch to a framebuffer because it doesn't exist.
In most cases, you should use the corebootfb ROM images. There ROM images
have corebootfb in the file name, and they start in a high resolution frame
buffer, provided by coreboot's libgfxinit library.
won't boot...something about file not found
Your device names (i.e. usb0, usb1, sd0, sd1, wd0, ahci0, hd0, etc) and numbers may differ. Use TAB completion.