# live usb failed



## kev07 (Dec 14, 2012)

I got 
ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/r...GES/9.0/FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img

I put it on a bootable usb with usb-imagewriter

I booted from the usb, when I selected Live CD I got error saying:

```
/etc/motd is not writable, update failed.
```
Then it asked me to login (but I don't know the name or password to login and have never set one.

My computer is:
Compaq CQ57-410TU XC7973 Presario notebook 802.11 b / g / n
02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. 	 RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter (rev 01)

Please help.


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## SirDice (Dec 14, 2012)

kev07 said:
			
		

> Then it asked me to login (but I don't know the name or password to login and have never set one.


Just a guess, root and no password.


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## kev07 (Dec 14, 2012)

No, that didn't work. All I got was a shell and I don't know what command to issue to get the wm or desktop environment going.


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## SirDice (Dec 14, 2012)

You won't get any. It's console only.


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## kev07 (Dec 14, 2012)

So I can't boot a live FreeBSD version to try it out?


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## SirDice (Dec 14, 2012)

I suggest you install something like VMWare or VirtualBox and install FreeBSD in there. That would allow you to play around with it without touching your current setup.

You may also want to check out PC-BSD, if I'm not mistaken they do have a live CD with all the bells and whistles.


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## kev07 (Dec 14, 2012)

Hmmm, I might try something else. When I tried to actually do an install, that also failed. My computer is not very powerful. Thanks for you help though and suggestions.


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## andreyi (Dec 14, 2012)

*Troubles with root on ZFS installation*

I can confirm the issue. I tried to use 9.1 imagestick to deploy root on ZFS. I followed http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/GPTZFSBoot/RAIDZ2. But it stopped almost immediately, /mnt is appeared as read only folder. So almost all steps in this guide do not work. I think either wiki article or image should be fixed.


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## SirDice (Dec 17, 2012)

Create a /tmp/mnt and use that.


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## andreyi (Dec 18, 2012)

This does not work, installer expects root FS mounted to /mnt


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## wblock@ (Dec 18, 2012)

Which installer?  bsdinstall(8) has an environment variable that can be set to the root mount.


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## SirDice (Dec 18, 2012)

And if you install by hand you don't need the installer at all. Just unpack everything.


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## andreyi (Dec 19, 2012)

Yes, finally I unpacked necessary files. But I'm not familiar with FreeBSD so such install takes significant amount of time. My point was that wiki should reflect current steps to install


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