# Boot FreeBSD 9.0 on intel iMac



## hanymac (Dec 26, 2012)

Hello, I'm trying to boot FreeBSD 9.0 on Apple iMac (Core Duo) with no luck.
I've searched a working solution on this forums and other places for *weeks* with no luck. Now it's time to ask 
I've installed it from memstick.img from a usb key to the internal iMac HD. Installing goes smooth.
I've tried several partitioning schemes, with no luck: I can't make it boot.
I use rEFIt as boot loader, installed on osx partition: rEFIt shows only memstick partition and is able to boot from it. But it does not show any FreeBSD partition on internal HD. No way. I followed advices from this forum (issued "gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 3 ada0" command too after install) but no luck. 

My question is easy: is there anybody who can tell me what's going on? In the past with older FreeBSD releases there was an option to install the bootloader directly from sysinstall, and it worked like a charm. I remember there was the need to explicitly set a partition as "bootable"... now this is gone. Infact bsdinstall tells me "hey you need also a boot partition"... and ok, I let it create for me. But... it does not show as bootable when I reboot the iMac.
Now with this release 9.0 I'm completely unable to understand what I have to do to boot FreeBSD. I'm getting mad.
Can anyone help me please? This 32 bit iMac does not run osx10.7 and up, so installing FreeBSD is the only way to use the PF packet filter, which actually is the purpose of this iMac (being a router/gw/proxy with the *great* pf)... For this reason the "Use VMWare" solution is not the good one.... I *need* it to boot from FreeBSD 9.0 

Should a use the entire disk for FreeBSD? Or the need of OSX partition with rEFIt is correct? 
Please help me  And sorry for my english.


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## holms (Jan 10, 2013)

will anybody answer this please? many people seeking for answer.. how to make freebsd work with refit?


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## trh411 (Jan 11, 2013)

I used the entire disk to install FreeBSD-9.1-RELEASE (amd64) on my iMac (early 2008). I ended up with a small boot partition, one large FreeBSD partition and a swap partition. After the install, FreeBSD would not boot, so I booted to rEFIt to update the MBR. rEFIt added a small EFI partition and updated the MBR to tag the FreeBSD boot partition as bootable (asterisk). FreeBSD booted right up after that. Have not had any problems since.

You do not need an OSX partition on the disk.


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