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Date:      Tue, 21 Mar 2017 12:04:41 -0400
From:      "James B. Byrne" <byrnejb@harte-lyne.ca>
To:        galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Unable to create bootable dvd
Message-ID:  <fa923d4a19e727e2093b3f23a6a79e9b.squirrel@webmail.harte-lyne.ca>

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On Mon, March 20, 2017 14:32, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> My hunch is: option "-dvd-compat" screws things up making it not
bootable.
> That option is only relevant to creation of video DVD ROMs
> (main goal of it is re-arrange the track so that table of
> contents files are the first onces along the track - which
> is necessary in stand alone DVD players).
> I do use this command all the time to burn bootable media
> (FreeBSD, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu...) and all of them work
> well for me. I do not use "-speed" option, but it shouldn't
> matter, and using slowest speed as you specify may help getting
> best possible quality of burn result. Anyway,
> here is command line from my command history:
> growisofs -Z
> /dev/dvd=/data/system-media/debian-8.6.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso
> I hope, this helps.
> Valeri

I created multiple dvds, some with and some without -dvd-compat and
-speed=1.  There was no apparent difference in effect.  I had similar
problems with usb flash media.  Funnily enough I had no problem with
either medium if I used FreeBSD-10.3 images.

The problem turned out to be UEFI.  This was not enabled on the host
system I was attempting to install on; a re-purposed backup host
formerly running CentOS-6.8.  Enabling this feature in BIOS (there is
a certain irony in this) allowed me to install FreeBSD-11.0 from the
usb flash drive.

This change also allowed the system to detect and initialise from
optical media as well but the boot process never completes.  I see
this sort of stuff instead:

Consoles: EFI Console
Command line arguments: loader.efi
Image base: 0x2235000
EFI version: 2.00
EFI Firmware: American Megatrends (rev 4.631)

FreeBSD/amd64 EFI loader, Revision 1.1
(root@releng2.nyi.freebsd.org, Thu Sep 29 01:38:06 UTC 2016)
efipart_readwrite: rw=1, status=9223372036854775815
efipart_readwrite: rw=1, status=9223372036854775815
can't open '/boot/loader.4th': no such file or directory
50
efipart_readwrite: rw=1, status=9223372036854775815
efipart_readwrite: rw=1, status=9223372036854775815
/
/boot/kernel/kernel text=0x14ed860 data=0x132538+0x4baa68
syms=[0x8+0x159ee8+0x8+0x172d9c]
Hit [enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt.
Booting [/boot/kernel/kernel]]...
Start @ 0xffffffff802ff000 ...
EFI framebuffer information:
addr, size     0xc0000000, 0x1ff0000
dimensions     800 x 600
stride         800
masks          0x00ff0000, 0x0000ff00, 0x000000ff, 0xff000000
|

at which point all activity ceases. Literally.  One cannot even reboot
from the keyboard using ctrl-alt-del.

I speculate that the firmware on the motherboard is likely out-of-date
and may be the source of the problem. In any case FreeBSD-11.0 has
been installed to the HDD by other means and boots from that without
problem.

As this system is but a temporary replacement these difficulties turn
out to be annoyances rather than a concern.

Regards,

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James B. Byrne                mailto:ByrneJB@Harte-Lyne.ca
Harte & Lyne Limited          http://www.harte-lyne.ca
9 Brockley Drive              vox: +1 905 561 1241
Hamilton, Ontario             fax: +1 905 561 0757
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