# Installer won't create freebsd-boot, no bootable system.



## Cityscape (Apr 5, 2017)

So I have installed FreeBSD a few times now, and it goes fine except I don't have a bootable system at the end. I get a grub error. I was previously using Linux (but those partitions were deleted to make room for FreeBSD.

During the installation I was never able to create a freebsd-boot partition like the handbook mentions. It gave me an "invalid arguement" error. Which I cannot figure out for the life of me since the handbook shows a freebsd-boot partition! The guided partitioner didn't show it was going to create one either.

So next time I tried creating another freebsd-ufs partition and mounting it to /boot. It did let me do that but still no bootable system.


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## Phishfry (Apr 5, 2017)

I suggest you zero the disk from the shell when you boot up the FreeBSD installer. Pick the shell instead of install.
`dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ada0 bs=64k`
Then reboot. This should get rid of grub.
Then when you install, during the disk phase, use the Auto disk setting and hit OK.
It takes care of disk partitions for you. No need to create anything.
Just use Auto disk config. EFI and MBR might be slightly different installs.
Installer handles that.


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## Cityscape (Apr 5, 2017)

Phishfry said:


> I suggest you zero the disk from the shell when you boot up the FreeBSD installer. Pick the shell instead of install.
> `dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ada0 bs=64k`
> Then reboot. This should get rid of grub.
> Then when you install, during the disk phase, use the Auto disk setting and hit OK.
> ...


I'd rather not zero the disk. Because I have Windows 10 that I'd rather not get rid of. I just want to install FreeBSD alongside Windows.


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