freebsd stable - Oct 2017 - Installing amd64 FreeBSD 11.1 in dual-boot with Windows 7 on an MBR partitioned disk

Sorry for top posting. Sounds like your BIOS will read the botox64.efi from
the removable USB drive, but won't from the hard drive. Force BIOS booting
instead of UEFI and it will install correctly. However, it may not boot
Windows, which I think requires UEFI these days.

The root of the problem is that we have no way to setup the EFI boot
variables in the installer that we need to properly installed under UEFI.
I'm working on that, so you'll need to be patient...

Warner


On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 8:03 AM, Rostislav Krasny <rosti.bsd at gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 6, 2017 at 8:33 PM, Eugene Grosbein <eugen at
grosbein.net>
> wrote:
> > 06.10.2017 22:17, Rostislav Krasny wrote:
> >
> >> I consider this as a critical bug. But maybe there is some
workaround
> >> that allows me to install the FreeBSD 11.1 as a second OS without
> >> repartitioning the entire disk?
> >>
> >> My hardware is an Intel Core i7 4790 3.6GHz based machine with
16GB
> >> RAM. The ada0 disk is 238GB SanDisk SD8SBAT256G1122 (SSD).
> >
> > bsdinstall (current installer) is seriously flawed comparing with
> sysinstall (previous one)
> > when we talk about installing FreeBSD to a slice within MBR.
>
> I think the bug is somewhere in the following code taken from
> partedit_x86.c
> https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/11.1.0/usr.sbin/
> bsdinstall/partedit/partedit_x86.c?revision=321354&view=co
> or in the code that fills the "machdep.bootmethod" sysctl
>
> static const char *
> x86_bootmethod(void)
> {
>     static char fw[255] = "";
>     size_t len = sizeof(fw);
>     int error;
>
>     if (strlen(fw) == 0) {
>         error = sysctlbyname("machdep.bootmethod", fw, &len,
NULL, -1);
>         if (error != 0)
>             return ("BIOS");
>     }
>
>     return (fw);
> }
>
> int
> is_scheme_bootable(const char *part_type)
> {
>
>     if (strcmp(part_type, "GPT") == 0)
>         return (1);
>     if (strcmp(x86_bootmethod(), "BIOS") == 0) {
>         if (strcmp(part_type, "BSD") == 0)
>             return (1);
>         if (strcmp(part_type, "MBR") == 0)
>             return (1);
>     }
>
>     return (0);
> }
>
> I've checked and found following:
> If booted from the installation media (USB drive) the
> "machdep.bootmethod" is UEFI.
> If booted from the already installed and updated 11.1-RELEASE-p1
> system the "machdep.bootmethod" is BIOS.
>
> This explains why I got that "is not bootable on this platform"
error
> message and similar warning (in case of manual partitioning). In my
> case the part_type is "MBR" and the x86_bootmethod() returns
"UEFI",
> so is_scheme_bootable() returns 0 and triggers the bug.
>
> I also made a screenshot of my BIOS boot mode configuration:
> http://i63.tinypic.com/k3g2v.jpg
> As you can see the legacy boot mode is enabled and the secure boot
> mode is disabled.
>
> If the machdep.bootmethod made to represent the BIOS configuration
> then it's value seems to be wrong.
> If it represents something else it should not be used in the above and
> probably in other bsdinstall code.
>
> > You still can install FreeBSD by invoking a shell from bsdinstall
> > and using gpart:
> >
> > gpart add -t freebsd -a 4096 ada0    # dedicate all unallocated space
> for ada0s3
> > gpart create -s BSD -n 20 ada0s3     # create BSD label able to
contain
> upto 20 partitions
> > gpart bootcode -b /boot/boot0 ada0   # install menu-driven boot
manager
> BootEasy to MBR
> > gpart bootcode -b /boot/boot ada0s3  # install FreeBSD-specific UFS
boot
> code to its slice
> > gpart set -a active -i 1 ada0        # make sure MBR has exactly one
> active partition
> > gpart add -t freebsd-swap -s 4G -i 2 # allocate 4G for a swap ada0s3b
> (choose size of your like)
> > gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 2G       # allocate 2G for root partition
> ada0s3a
> > newfs -L root /dev/ada0s3a
> > gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 1G       # allocate 1G for read-only /usr
> partition ada0s3d
> > newfs -L usr /dev/ada0s3d
> > gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 4G       # allocate 4G for /var ada0s3e
> > newfs -L var /dev/ada0s3e
> > gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 10G      # allocate 10G /usr/local: future
> installed ports & packages
> > newfs -L usrl /dev/ada0s3f
> > gpart add -t freebsd-ufs             # allocate all other space for
/home
> > newfs -L home /dev/ada0s3g
> >
> > Then you will have mount new ada0s3a, create mount points for other
> partitions there,
> > create etc/fstab, extract *.txz from distibution media and it will
boot
> just fine.
>
> This commands list is too long to be run manually during the
> installation and without any web/email access. I've just installed
> FreeBSD again using the manual partitioning (ignored the warning
> message) and then I ran two following commands:
>
> boo0cfg -Bv /dev/ada0
> gpart bootcode -b /boot/boot ada0s3
>
> This made my FreeBSD 11.1 system bootable. The only issue now is a low
> console resolution. When I boot from the installation media (the USB
> drive) the console resolution is high/native already at the boot
> loader/menu stage. When I boot the installed system the console
> resolution is low. I compared /boot/loader.conf of both and didn't
> find much difference. In the installation media it has just one line
> that defines some timeout and in the installed system it's empty. How
> can I fix the console resolution issue? How the installation media
> does it?
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>

On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 6:26 PM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com>
wrote:
> Sorry for top posting. Sounds like your BIOS will read the botox64.efi from
> the removable USB drive, but won't from the hard drive. Force BIOS
booting
> instead of UEFI and it will install correctly. However, it may not boot
> Windows, which I think requires UEFI these days.
>
> The root of the problem is that we have no way to setup the EFI boot
> variables in the installer that we need to properly installed under UEFI.
> I'm working on that, so you'll need to be patient...
>
> Warner
My computer doesn't have any EFI partition and this explains why the
installed FreeBSD boots in the BIOS mode on it. The installation media
probably has the EFI partition (with the bootx64.efi) and then BIOS
probably boots the installation media in the UEFI mode instead of the
BIOS mode. So the "machdep.bootmethod" sysctl doesn't represent
the
BIOS boot mode configuration but a boot method the currently running
system was booted in. If this is true then the "machdep.bootmethod"
sysctl should not be used in bsdinstall. At least not for the
bootability check. Something else should be used for the bootability
check or the bsdinstall should trust the user choice.

BTW this is how the EFI partition looks like in someone's Windows 7
disk manager:
https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/images/en_US/efi-system-partition.png
and this how it looks without any EFI partition in my system (with
Windows 7 / FreeBSD dual-boot)
http://i68.tinypic.com/9u19b8.png

I think even that NTFS System Reserved partition is not mandatory for
Windows installation. It just used to keep Windows boot files in a
safe, place preventing accidental deletion by a user. It's being
created if Windows is installed on an empty disk but if you create
just one big NTFS partition prior to the Windows installation and
install it on that single partition it will be ok. There will be just
more Windows system files on the C disk, for example ntldr,
NTDETECT.COM. It can be checked on VM, for example on VirtualBox.

07.10.2017 22:26, Warner Losh wrote:
> Sorry for top posting. Sounds like your BIOS will read the botox64.efi from
the removable USB drive,
> but won't from the hard drive. Force BIOS booting instead of UEFI and
it will install correctly.
> However, it may not boot Windows, which I think requires UEFI these days.
My home desktop is UEFI-capable and but switched to BIOS/MBR mode
and it dual-boots FreeBSD/Windows 8.1 just fine.