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Date:      Fri, 23 Mar 2018 13:53:43 +0100
From:      Maurizio Vairani <maurizio1018@gmail.com>
To:        Benno Rice <benno@freebsd.org>
Cc:        FreeBSD Current <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Testing requested: Hybrid ISO/USB boot
Message-ID:  <CAN0zgYWcrgbNdbF0jj829V7Q_SpVX54M2sMr=U0RN3wGaNekTg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <D606FA1E-8E53-4D57-8A3C-2914B92385D6@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <D606FA1E-8E53-4D57-8A3C-2914B92385D6@FreeBSD.org>

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2018-03-22 19:06 GMT+01:00 Benno Rice <benno@freebsd.org>:

> Hello all!
>
> I=E2=80=99ve been working on the ability to create hybrid ISO/HDD boot im=
ages for
> x86, a la what Linux systems do with ISOHYBRID. The general theory seems =
to
> be that ISO images have a 32KB hunk of zeroes at the front that they
> generally ignore so we=E2=80=99ll stick something in there that can handl=
e booting
> if need be. The cases generally break down as follows:
>
> UEFI with CD: Boots using an EFI system partition embedded in the ISO
> image. This loads loader, and so on.
> UEFI with HDD: Same as above as UEFI doesn=E2=80=99t really care what the
> underlying medium is and it sees the ISO image.
> Legacy BIOS with CD: Boots using El Torrito as always.
>
> And now for the new part:
>
> Legacy BIOS with HDD: Sees a DOS MBR stuck in the 32KB at the front of th=
e
> ISO image. This MBR contains our MBR boot code, which sees an active BSD
> slice containing a variant of our BSD boot code that reads from the ISO
> filesystem instead of UFS. This finds loader in the ISO filesystem and
> loads that. Loader has had support for reading ISO9660 images off HDDs
> added. Everything continues normally after that.
>
> The review for these changes is here:
>
> https://reviews.freebsd.org/D14799 <https://reviews.freebsd.org/D14799>;
>
> And a version of the standard =E2=80=9Cbootonly=E2=80=9D ISO image built =
with these
> changes is here:
>
> https://people.freebsd.org/~benno/hybrid-bootonly.iso.xz <
> https://people.freebsd.org/~benno/hybrid-bootonly.iso.xz>;
>
> I=E2=80=99ve tested this image under qemu and VMware under all four of th=
e
> BIOS/UEFI and CD/HDD combinations. I=E2=80=99ve also booted a system buil=
d around
> an Asus X399 Prime motherboard with this dd=E2=80=99ed to a USB stick. I=
=E2=80=99d love
> some testing on more systems, especially things that are more likely to
> have more customized boot firmwares (I=E2=80=99m thinking Dell, HP, etc).
>
> Many thanks,
>         Benno.
> _______________________________________________
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> https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscribe@freebsd.org=
"
>
Hi Benno,
thank you for your work.

On a Mac mini "Core i5" 2.3 (Mid-2011), booting via USB, it hangs very
early, after writing:
FreeBSD/x86 bootstrap loader, version 1.1
(Wed Mar 21 10:27:48 PDT 2018 benno@bobthe)

Regards,
Maurizio



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