# Cannot boot FreeBSD on Virtualbox



## ostowe (Mar 1, 2013)

I'm running Virtualbox 4.2.6 on OSX 10.7.5, trying to install FreeBSD 7.4 for testing changes to a client's site.

The problem: getting the "FATAL: no bootable medium found! System halted" error.
What I've tried (just a heads up, I'm real new to this so I have very little idea what I'm doing):
- Using default Virtualbox settings for FreeBSD.
- 10GB dynamically allocated VDI.
- Messing around with some of the settings in Virtualbox (Like ICH6 vs. PIIX4 for storage, changing storage to a SATA controller. I really only have the vaguest idea what any of those are, however).
- Installing 7.4 and 8.3 from DVD iso (both boot fine).
- Pretty much just default FreeBSD settings. Some variance in each time I've tried installing.
- Installation always seems successful.

Every time I remove the disk image and reboot, the system fails to boot off the VDI. Attached my latest log, in case that's useful. Thanks for any help!


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## wblock@ (Mar 1, 2013)

Don't change the default hardware.  Without seeing the choices you've made in the installer, it's very difficult to guess what is going on.  First guess would be that you did not install bootcode.  In sysinstall(8), that was the "Leave MBR alone" choice.

I would recommend not installing 7.x any more at all, and only using 8.x if there is some odd requirement.  Use 9.1-RELEASE or later from now on.  It installs GPT or MBR bootcode by default, so this problem does not come up.

If you post logs, put them on pastebin.com or some other location that can be read without having to download and extract a file.


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## kpa (Mar 1, 2013)

If you're trying to use amd64 version of FreeBSD you have to use the IO APIC option in VirtualBox settings, IO APIC is mandatory on amd64 architecture.


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## ostowe (Mar 1, 2013)

Alright, I'll keep the standard hardware. Unfortunately the server I'm trying to emulate uses freeBSD 6.4, which I can't find (Crazy? Probably. I'm not the server admin.) Here are the specific settings I've gone through in the latest install:
Virtualbox:
-128mb memory
-10gb VDI
FreeBSD (just going through every selection I make in the menus):
- Standard Install
- Use entire disk
- Standard MBR
- Auto defaults for...directories? (/, /usr, /var, etc.)
- Developer distribution with ports.
- Install from CD/DVD
- Ethernet configured with DHCP
- NOT a network gateway
- inetd enabled, including: ftp, ssh, telnet (not sure what this is...), shell (or this), login (or this. Just figured I'd turn them on? I dunno.)
- SSH enabled
- anonymous FTP disabled
- NOT and NFS server or client
- CST time zone.
- Created a new user part of wheel member group (not sure what this means, but I guess it's convenient?), using default login shell

Aaaaaand it seems to be working. Okay. It was the MBR, i had been setting that to none because I thought it was only used if you wanted to dual boot with another OS. Oops! Thanks a bunch!


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## wblock@ (Mar 1, 2013)

Just to clarify:

mbr (the original file is in /etc/boot/ is the simple loader that boots the first active partition on the disk.  That partition does not have to be FreeBSD.  mbr can be installed with fdisk -B.

boot0 is the multi-boot loader, installed with boot0cfg(8).


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