installs fine, but won't boot.

Kernel_Sanders · 02-25-2006, 08:33 AM

Removed text

ShadowMan · 02-25-2006, 11:10 AM

Just some ideas.

If you have a dos system disk, try booting with that and running Fdisk. See if there is a Primary partition that is set to active. If not, then try setting it as active from fdisk. I tried Freebsd 6 and it worked but kept saying something was wrong with my hd. I now use PC-BSD http://www.pcbsd.org/ which is based on FreeBsd 6.0-Release. This works just fine as it comes with KDE 3.5 pre-installed.You can still use all the Freebsd stuff like Ports.

Hope that helps.

Randux · 04-06-2006, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kernel_Sanders

I've been trying to get FreeBSD to run on my Toshiba Satellite (m45 359). I tried a couple of times with version 6.0 and the install went fine, but the computer doesn't seem to recognize the drive as being bootable. (So I experimented with a couple different options: standard boot manager, bsd boot manager, setting the partition (yes, it's a primary) to bootable, even erasing the whole drive and allocating it to FreeBSD. Regardless of what I've tried, the boot sequence doesn't see a hardrive and skips it.

Also tried 5.4, but that freezes on booting the install cd (probably just need to disable acpi) but I really don't want 5.4 anyways.

Currently I'm writing this from ubuntu dapper (as a test) - install went smooth and grub loaded with no problem but I'd really prefer to get back to bsd.

Thanks for anyway help or feedback.

As far as I know, only *doze needs its partition marked bootable. I don't know anything about FreeBSD, but I think it's worth a try to use Lilo to load it as a chainloader. This is a very simple definition in the lilo.conf. Why I am suggesting this is because I multiboot a bunch of linux distros and OpenBSD with this setup and it works great. Try this definition in your lilo.conf (this is only the freebsd entry, not the whole lilo.conf). Let's suppose you are using /dev/hda2 as your FreeBSD partition, if not, change it to meet your needs.

Code:

# boot FreeBSD
      other = /dev/hda2
        label = myFreeBSD
        table = /dev/hda

then update Lilo to the MBR from your linux distro with

Code:

lilo -v -t -b /dev/hda     # this is test only
lilo -v -b /dev/hda        # once you get no errors, do this

saikee · 04-06-2006, 12:54 PM

Have a look at the link of my 100+ system thread in my signature. It has a section using Grub to boot FreeBSD plus others.

It is along the line of Randux but sinec you have Ubuntu and it has Grub so no need to load another boot loader Lilo. Lilo can do the same job but Grub is easier as it doesn't need to be updated as Lilo. Just edit Ubuntu Dapper's /boot/grub/menu.lst and save it and FreeBSD should boot on a reboot.

If you are getting desperate then have a look at my booting tips link and make a bootable floppy or CD. With it you can boot up FreeBSD manually. There is no PC system that I know that cannot be booted by Grub floppy/CD.