# Difficulty installing 8.0-RC1 & RC2 on a USB Stick



## deepdish (Oct 30, 2009)

Hello,

I am having difficulty installing FreeBSD on a USB stick (32GB) as I intend to use this as a hard-drive substitute. 

At the moment I do not have the errors/messages with me, but will post them hopefully sometime in the day. In the mean time, I will describe the problems I am encountering:

- 8.0-RC1 & 8.0-RC2:
During the FreeBSD installation process, I setup the FreeBSD slice to use up the entire 32GB stick, and use the auto-default setting to set up the partitions within the slice. After choosing my installation type (minimal) and install source (Passive FTP), it prompts a message stating that it is unable to create a partition. At this point, I can't go forward with the install. 

On 7.2-RELEASE:
I am able to install 7.2-RELEASE without any issues and using the same steps as mentioned above with 8.0-RC1 & RC2. My intentions at this point is to upgrade from 7.2 RELEASE to 8.0-RC2, so my process is the following: upgrade from 7.2-REL to 7.2-p4, then from 7.2-p4 to 8.0-RC2. After applying the ~9000 patches for the 8.0-RC2 upgrade, it asks me to reboot. During the booting process, FreeBSD panics as it is unable to find the / partition on the USB stick. There is a prompt which asks me to locate the / partition, but I don't remember the name of the prompt nor can I input anything from my USB keyboard. I'm sure if I had a PS/2 keyboard, I would be able to input something during this prompt but I never bothered going this far.

I understand that there has been changes on the USB stack in 8.0, but I would just be assuming that it is the source of the problem. 
A little history on the USB key, it was my main "drive" when I installed OpenSolaris 2009.06 . It most likely used the GPT partition scheme. I never bothered zero'ing out the entire stick (IIRC, GPT table is saved on the start & end portion of the drive/USB stick) since I figured if it worked in 7.2, upgrading to 8.0 shouldn't be an issue :\.

Anyway, I will post the errors/messages so that you guys can see whats going on. Hopefully I can do this later in the day.
In the meantime, any ideas based on the description of the problem??

Thanks!


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## graudeejs (Oct 30, 2009)

Whenever I install anything, i fallow this guide
http://www.daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=1538

on FreeBSD8 make partitions with gpart, it's easy.


I boot my pc from usb with gpt every day


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## CLUBTURBO (Oct 30, 2009)

Makes a bootable USB drive 
This is a powerful tool, have fun!
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ :stud



			
				deepdish said:
			
		

> Hello,
> 
> I am having difficulty installing FreeBSD on a USB stick (32GB) as I intend to use this as a hard-drive substitute.
> 
> ...


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## deepdish (Oct 30, 2009)

CLUBTURBO said:
			
		

> Makes a bootable USB drive
> This is a powerful tool, have fun!
> http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ :stud



"
UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for a variety of Linux distributions from Windows or Linux, without requiring you to burn a CD.
"

I need the USB stick to be the main hard-drive of the OS, not a CDROM substitute.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Oct 30, 2009)

I ran into a problem installing from a daily
snapshot of _8 (august 2009) onto a sata - on -pci cntllr
disk.  (could not find /dev/da10 or something) ... /da10
was missing the rest of them despite BSD filesystems on
it.  Never did solve it, upgraded on a PATA to _8.  
Just guessing it will be fixed sometime in 2010 if not
already. Unsure if it is relevant to part of your first
post here.


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## CLUBTURBO (Oct 30, 2009)

deepdish said:
			
		

> "
> UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for a
> variety of Linux distributions from Windows or Linux,
> without requiring you to burn a CD.
> ...




*You can do this with UNetbootin.
You missed that small point
You can install OS anywhere you want*

*********************************
Installation & Screenshots
If using Windows, run the file, select a distribution, 
floppy/hard disk image, or kernel/initrd to load, select a 
target drive (USB Drive or Hard Disk), then reboot once done.


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