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Subject: More Questions about Booting from a Thumb Drive
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Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 15:59:09 -0500
From: "Martin G. McCormick" <martin@server1.shellworld.net>
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I started with FreeBSD-9.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img, added
loader.conf to get a serial console and then used dd to put the
new image on to a thumb drive.
	We tried it on a brand new Dell server with no previous
operating system. This server uses EFI instead of BIOS-type
booting. The thumb drive was in the boot order and the system
saw it, so to speak, but it can't boot from it. We also tried
the drive on several laptops and work stations and none of them
ever booted FreeBSD.
	The only thing I did to the image was the addition of
the loader.conf file in /boot. In the pristine image, there is
no loader.conf file, but this problem is more a failure to
launch. The system sees the drive and could boot if it liked
what it saw but it doesn't attempt to even start to boot.

	I created the drive image by:

dd if=FreeBSD-9.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick-headless.img of=/dev/sdb
Of course, /dev/sdb was what it happened to be on this computer
but all that appeared to go perfectly. It just doesn't boot.

Martin McCormick