GNU Boot – How to install FreeBSD on x86 GNU GRUB payload

Return to index

This guide was written for FreeBSD at a time where Libreboot was still fully free.

FreeBSD is not a fully free softrware operating system / distribution and so the GNU Boot project can’t force its contributors to test GNU Boot with FreeBSD.

Because of that this page is only meant for people already Using FreeBSD. See the BSD index page for more details about how GNU Boot deals with this issue and the way forward to a better support for BSD systems in GNU Boot.

According to the Libreboot project at the time, FreeBSD might show graphical corruption during bootup. They also advised that you could fix this by altering the order in which kernel modules/drivers were loaded. First, by trying to move video to an earlier stage on the boot process, or by trying to move it to a later stage instead. They advised that with this, you should have been able to get a working display.

They also told that freebsd.img was the installation image for FreeBSD. And that you might have to adapt the filename accordingly, for whatever FreeBSD version you used.

## Prepare the USB drive (in FreeBSD)

This page on the FreeBSD website shows how to create a bootable USB drive for installing FreeBSD. Use the dd on that page.

## Prepare the USB drive (in NetBSD)

This page on the NetBSD website shows how to create a NetBSD bootable USB drive from within NetBSD itself. You should use the dd method documented there; you can use this with any ISO, including FreeBSD.

## Prepare the USB drive (in LibertyBSD or OpenBSD)

If you downloaded your ISO on a LibertyBSD or OpenBSD system, here is how to create the bootable FreeBSD USB drive:

Connect the USB drive. Check dmesg:

dmesg | tail

Check to confirm which drive it is, for example, if you think its sd3:

disklabel sd3

Check that it wasn’t automatically mounted. If it was, unmount it. For example:

doas umount /dev/sd3i

dmesg told you what device it is. Overwrite the drive, writing the FreeBSD installer to it with dd. For example:

doas dd if=freebsd.img of=/dev/rsdXc bs=1M; sync

You should now be able to boot the installer from your USB drive. Continue reading, for information about how to do that.

## Prepare the USB drive (in GNU+Linux)

If you downloaded your ISO on a GNU+Linux system, here is how to create the bootable FreeBSD USB drive:

Connect the USB drive. Check dmesg:

dmesg

Check lsblk to confirm which drive it is:

lsblk

Check that it wasn’t automatically mounted. If it was, unmount it. For example:

sudo umount /dev/sdX* umount /dev/sdX*

dmesg told you what device it is. Overwrite the drive, writing your distro ISO to it with dd. For example:

sudo dd if=freebsd.img of=/dev/sdX bs=8M; sync dd if=freebsd.img of=/dev/sdX bs=8M; sync

You should now be able to boot the installer from your USB drive. Continue reading, for information about how to do that.

## Installing FreeBSD without full disk encryption

Press C in GRUB to access the command line:

grub> kfreebsd (usb0,gpt3)/boot/kernel/kernel grub> set FreeBSD.vfs.mountfrom=ufs:/dev/da1p3
grub> boot

It will start booting into the FreeBSD installer. Follow the normal process for installing FreeBSD.

## Installing FreeBSD with full disk encryption

TODO

## Booting

[link]

TODO

## Configuring Grub

[link]

TODO

# Troubleshooting

[link]

According to the Libreboot project at a time when it was still fully free, most of the issues occur when using coreboot’s ‘text mode’ instead of the coreboot framebuffer. This mode is useful for booting payloads like memtest86+ which expect text-mode, but for FreeBSD, accodring to Libreboot at the time, it can be problematic when they are trying to switch to a framebuffer because it doesn’t exist.

In most cases, you should use the corebootfb ROM images. There ROM images have `corebootfb` in the file name, and they start in a high resolution frame buffer, provided by coreboot’s `libgfxinit` library.

## won’t boot…something about file not found

Your device names (i.e. usb0, usb1, sd0, sd1, wd0, ahci0, hd0, etc) and numbers may differ. Use TAB completion.

Markdown file for this page: https://gnu.org/software/gnuboot/docs/bsd/freebsd.md