# Atom Processor Motherboard No Boot Volume



## daBee (Dec 22, 2015)

Hi folks.

I have an Intel motherboard that's giving me some headaches.  I can't seem to see any of the installers on both USB drives and a USB external DVD drive.  

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us...m-processors/intel-desktop-board-d2500hn.html

I am trying these installers:

FreeBSD-11.0-CURRENT-amd64-20151217-r292413-mini-memstick.img
FreeBSD-11.0-CURRENT-amd64-20151217-r292413-disc1.iso

For the Atom processor, are the amd64 versions the right ones?  Not sure where to go with this one.  Any leadership appreciated.  

Cheers


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## getopt (Dec 22, 2015)

Did you set the BIOS for booting from an USB-device?
amd64 is ok.


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## daBee (Dec 22, 2015)

getopt said:


> Did you set the BIOS for booting from an USB-device?



You bet.  Been troubleshooting this for a couple days now doing stuff like that.  I even called Intel and they said to shove in some new firmware for the BIOS.


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## Phishfry (Dec 22, 2015)

Definitely a 64 bit processor as only the earliest Atoms were not. Atom 330 and N270 were 32 bit.

I would dig through the bios and set SATA to Legacy.


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## daBee (Dec 22, 2015)

Phishfry said:


> Definitely a 64 bit processor as only the earliest AToms were not. Atom 330 and N270 were 32 bit.
> 
> I would dig through the bios and set SATA to Legacy.



SATA works fine.  I had to unplug it as it was booting up the old install on the SSD that's in the box.  USB is the issue.  I want to overwrite the current image on the drive as it's from a completely different box.


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## daBee (Dec 22, 2015)

OK here are my settings and the problematic results where it doesn't want to see my USB thumb drive.


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## shepper (Dec 22, 2015)

Phishfry said:


> Defiantly a 64 bit processor as only the earliest Atoms were not. Atom 330 and N270 were 32 bit.



I've run OpenBSD amd64 and Debian amd64 on an Atom 330 motherboards.  I have an N270 based netbook (Acer Aspire One) that will only run i386.

Getting back to the OP question, I would try 4 things:
1)  Is there an BIOS option for legacy USB devices? ?USB Optimizations? in your 2nd photo.   If so try enabling it.  On one motherboard I have the bios will not even probe for usb devices unless this is enabled.
2)  Try reformating the thumb drive.  Sometimes with gpt based boot loaders, there are some left over bits in the boot table that corrupt the boot process.
3)  Try OpenBSD's miniroot58.fs (the Release Version is MBR).
4)  Try a different thumb drive.


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## Phishfry (Dec 23, 2015)

Did you at least try setting SATA to Legacy. It disables AHCI disk mode which could be your problem.

I stand corrected Atom 330 is infact 64 bit. Z510 was 32 bit.


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## wblock@ (Dec 23, 2015)

The system date is about forty years fast.  System date and time can be important.

There is an option for UEFI boot.  This suggests it is not a BIOS, but UEFI.  Look in the Security tab.  There might be settings that limit booting to only triple-encrypted ultra-ridiculous signed ultra-secure UEFI boot devices.


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## shepper (Dec 23, 2015)

The integrated graphics on the 2500 series may be an issue.  I believe that it is based on the PowerVR closed source driver.  Intel supplied a binary blob to Ubuntu but I do not believe it is available for any BSD.


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## obsigna (Dec 23, 2015)

daBee said:


> SATA works fine.  I had to unplug it as it was booting up the old install on the SSD that's in the box.  USB is the issue.  I want to overwrite the current image on the drive as it's from a completely different box.


Is the _"completely different box"_ by chance a FreeBSD 10.0 machine, or does the boot code on the USB drive for any reason origin from a 10.0 box? If yes, then your problem might be related to: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/freebsd-10-wont-boot.46014/#post-257487.

In later FreeBSD versions, the GPT boot code did not show this issue, however, boot codes won't become updated automagically on old drives. There is another solution of the problem which has been discovered in a later thread. Try, to set active the whole USB drive using the following command:
`gpart set -a active /dev/daX`. Replace 'X' by the actual serial number of that device node, most probably this is '0'.


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## wblock@ (Dec 23, 2015)

shepper said:


> The integrated graphics on the 2500 series may be an issue.  I believe that it is based on the PowerVR closed source driver.  Intel supplied a binary blob to Ubuntu but I do not believe it is available for any BSD.


Not a problem unless X is needed.  Even vt(4) can be set to use text only with hw.vga.textmode=1.


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## daBee (Dec 23, 2015)

Thank you for that.  The legacy settings are what turned on the DVD player at least.


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## daBee (Dec 23, 2015)

obsigna said:


> Is the _"completely different box"_ by chance a FreeBSD 10.0 machine, or does the boot code on the USB drive for any reason origin from a 10.0 box? If yes, then your problem might be related to: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/freebsd-10-wont-boot.46014/#post-257487.
> 
> In later FreeBSD versions, the GPT boot code did not show this issue, however, boot codes won't become updated automagically on old drives. There is another solution of the problem which has been discovered in a later thread. Try, to set active the whole USB drive using the following command:
> `gpart set -a active /dev/daX`. Replace 'X' by the actual serial number of that device node, most probably this is '0'.



This SSD was pulled from a Shuttle that experienced the famous death.  Purple smoke.  The SSD has/had 10.1 on it, but I wanted to start fresh as it's a different processor and I didn't want to invite problems down the road.  

Turns out I am having issues with 11.0 installing.  It halted.  So I'm now pushing through the 10.1 DVD I had left over, and am using the Live CD for installation.  The beauty about this OS is that it's a minuscule footprint to install.  That amount of smallness confused me when I first started messing around with FreeBSD as I'm used to these massive file structures.


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## kpa (Dec 24, 2015)

daBee said:


> The beauty about this OS is that it's a minuscule footprint to install.  That amount of smallness confused me when I first started messing around with FreeBSD as I'm used to these massive file structures.



FreeBSD operating system is just a bare bones system, no third party applications such as X11, desktop environments or web browsers included unless you choose to install them via packages or ports(7). This is in stark contrast with almost every Linux distribution that define the operating system as a base system plus the third party applications selected by the vendor of the distribution.


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## daBee (Dec 24, 2015)

Actually, on that note, is there a way to automate an installation with menu choices?  Can I make a file that provides answers to those installation decisions so that I can automate volume duplication?


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## Phishfry (Dec 25, 2015)

You can set it back to AHCI after it recognized the DVD ROM. The firmware's "Legacy OpROM" just needed a kick. AHCI is prefered.


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## daBee (Dec 25, 2015)

Phishfry said:


> You can set it back to AHCI after it recognized the DVD ROM. The firmware's "Legacy OpROM" just needed a kick. AHCI is prefered.



Sorry, what is AHCI?


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## tingo (Dec 25, 2015)

A standard "protocol" for operating devices on a SATA bus. AHCI article on Wikipedia.


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## daBee (Dec 26, 2015)

tingo said:


> A standard "protocol" for operating devices on a SATA bus. AHCI article on Wikipedia.



OK, the DVD ROM is USB mounted, not SATA.  SATA has never given me any issues.  Setting the Legacy to ON was what fixed the DVD ROM, but not the USB thumb drives.  I remember having that issue before with 10.1 on the previous box.


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## Atsuri (Dec 31, 2015)

From personal experience a SATA/IDE connected DVD ROM would probably be more likely to boot than the USB thumb drive. However, it also might be due to my lacking experience in handling FreeBSD thumb drive images as opposed to Linux hybrid disc images, which typically work .


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## daBee (Jan 1, 2016)

Ya I tried several iterations and it never worked (thumb drives).


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## fullauto2012 (Jun 19, 2017)

Just a note:  I had this problem a few days ago with a supermicro server.  I couldn't boot USB thumbs from the outboard ports.  It would only boot USB drives from the onboard (inside) USB port for security reasons.  Once I plugged my thumb drive in there, it recognized it, added USB to the boot menu, and proceeded to install fine.


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