From owner-freebsd-amd64@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jan 18 20:10:15 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D3C20E65 for ; Sat, 18 Jan 2014 20:10:15 +0000 (UTC) Received: from burnttofu.net (burnttofu.net [IPv6:2607:fc50:1:9d00::9977]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id A760B1CEB for ; Sat, 18 Jan 2014 20:10:15 +0000 (UTC) Received: from sponge.es.net (c-69-181-97-106.hsd1.ca.comcast.net [69.181.97.106]) (authenticated bits=0) by burnttofu.net (8.14.7/8.14.5) with ESMTP id s0IKAAL2064552 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA bits=256 verify=NOT); Sat, 18 Jan 2014 15:10:12 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from michael@rancid.berkeley.edu) Message-ID: <52DADFA2.9040303@rancid.berkeley.edu> Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2014 12:10:10 -0800 From: Michael Sinatra User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.2.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Volker Nebel , freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Booting FreeBSD on a Macintosh? References: <52D6D32A.9010506@rancid.berkeley.edu> In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 1.6 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Greylist: Sender succeeded SMTP AUTH, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.4.3 (burnttofu.net [162.217.113.18]); Sat, 18 Jan 2014 15:10:12 -0500 (EST) X-BeenThere: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.17 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting FreeBSD to the AMD64 platform List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2014 20:10:16 -0000 On 01/15/14 11:26, Volker Nebel wrote: > > On Wed, 15 Jan 2014, Michael Sinatra wrote: > >> On 1/15/14 3:01 AM, Volker Nebel wrote: >>> Dear all, >>> >>> looking for a good a computer I bought a Macmini 6,1 with Intel Core i5 >>> last summer, then installed Ubuntu (for amd64) on it and now came back >>> to FreeBSD (already running on my laptop). Having installed this, the >>> macmini does not boot anymore, unfortunately. It only shows a blinking >>> question mark in a folder symbol. >>> I searched the web for hints and found half a dozen of pages >>> describing how to run both, Mac OS and FreeBSD. One page recommanded to >>> issue >>> "gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gtpboot -i 1 ada0" after the >>> installation and before reboot, but this didn't help. I found the hint >>> to use FreeBSD for i386 - same result. (And it did boot Ubuntu for >>> amd64.) Someone else recommanded to use MBR partitioning scheme instead >>> of GPT, but the Partition Editor of the FreeBSD Installer returns "Error >>> Invalid Argument" when I try to Create a partition of type freebsd-boot >>> and size 64k or 512K. >>> Can anybody help? How can I install FreeBSD 9.2 on a Macmini and >>> boot? >> >> Surprisingly, the way I have gotten it to work is to use a good, >> old-fashioned BSD-style disklabel. I just installed FreeBSD 10-RC1 on a >> Mac Mini, but it was the oldest possible Intel version (a 1,1). >> >> If you install 9.2 the way you would install 8--use an MBR partition >> with BSD disklabel on slice 1, you should get it to boot. >> >> I am not close to the machine right now, and it's powered off, but I can >> fire it up and send you the partition/label parameters. >> >> Again, this is a very old 1,1 (still, it's an EFI system, but it's only >> 32-bit), but the same scheme might work on your system as well. >> >> michael >> >> >> > > Hi Michael, > > thank you for the hints! Though I would prefer GTP disk layout because > booting with MBR may take longer (Apple first looks for GTP file system, > that's what one of the posts said), I wouldn't mind doing so. But as I > wrote, I don't get the first slice created. Is type freebsd-boot wrong? I read that also, but I am not sure it's quite right. At any rate the following MBR partition scheme boots just fine on a Mini 1,1: [kenai] /home/michael# gpart show => 63 125045361 ada0 MBR (60G) 63 125045298 1 freebsd [active] (60G) 125045361 63 - free - (32K) => 0 125045298 ada0s1 BSD (60G) 0 117440512 1 freebsd-ufs (56G) 117440512 7604224 2 freebsd-swap (3.6G) 125044736 562 - free - (281K) Oddly, if you skip the MBR and just do a BSD disklabel on the device (similar to the old "dangerously dedicated" mode), it will still boot properly into FreeBSD. I have yet to find a GPT scheme that will boot from a Mac Mini's EFI (at least without something like rEFIt, but even that doesn't always work with GPT schemes). I assume that's because the Minis I have are really old; however, I have a newer mini (the one I am composing this message on--I think it's a 3,1) that also boots with a similar MBR scheme. The easiest way to install this with the newer bsdinstallers is to select "Manual" partitioning and then create an MBR partition with the first slice for FreeBSD, and then label that slice with a BSD dislabel, in the same way that sysinstall would have done it for 7.x or 8.x. After that, it should "just work." michael