# Install from USB stick problem



## wkt (Apr 23, 2010)

I tried to get the disc1.iso or the memstick.img systems of FreeBSD 8.0 on an USB stick by using the
unetbootin utility under Windows 7.

When I try to boot from the USB stick I get the error message that "bootmgr is missing" even though
unetbootin has a third step where it says it loads the boot manager.

Is this an error of unetbootin ? I read in the forum that people have problems with the 8.0 version.
Do I perhaps have an old version of unetbootin ?

Is there another way to get FreeBSD install booting from the USB stick under Windows 7.
I tried to make the USB stick active with the diskpart utility and then copied the content of the
.img or .iso systems by XCOPY to the USB stick. But I had no success in booting :r

Any help or suggestions ? Thank you.


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## klanger (Apr 23, 2010)

If you don't have access to FreeBSD running computer, download BSD-live cd (ex. ghostbsdhttp://www.ghostbsd.org/73/ghostbsd-1-0-news/) and burn it on CD.
Run live-cd & from there use dd command and with it put FreeBSD or even better PC-BSD 8.0 (bootonly) .img file on usb-stick.

http://docs.pcbsd.org/guide/



> Writing the ISO to Flash media
> To write the USB ISO file to a Flash Card or USB pen drive you can do this with the Unix command 'dd':
> 
> dd if=<path_to/img_file.iso> of=/dev/da0 bs=1m
> Just substitute da0 with the device name of your USB stick.



Unetbootin doesn't support FreeBSD (at least not for me).

PS. If it is your first time with BSD, maybe a better option is to download http://www.pcbsd.org/content/view/152/11/#USBPC-BSD 8.0 full DVD or img file and install that on your computer (back up your data first because you'II have a great oportunity to delete it while installing BSD on  your W7 machine as well as your windows OS).

Also, you can install PC-BSD in VirtualBox... inside W7 and from there create a bootable FBSD usb-stick


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## michaelrmgreen (Apr 24, 2010)

try copying the image to the USB stick with this :
http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

Let us know if it works out.


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## wkt (Apr 24, 2010)

klanger said:
			
		

> Also, you can install PC-BSD in VirtualBox... inside W7 and from there create a bootable FBSD usb-stick



Thank you for your hints about PC-BSD which I didn't know yet. For now I want to work with FreeBSD only, and perhaps use PCBSD at a later time if I have more experience.

I installed FreeBSD now in VirtualBox but alas I have no access to my USB stick.

I don't know how to add the USB stick to the VirtualBox, I selected some filters in the USB dialog but I always get error messages the device is busy. In fstab there is also no /dev/da0 entry.


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## klanger (Apr 24, 2010)

You're welcome 

PC-BSD is FBSD the "easy way", so that was the reason I've posted the link&info.

With FBSD there is much more to do after install, to get working desktop one thing is to enable usb&other stuff -> follow FBSD handbook + some theards on this forum.

If you just want to install BSD in VBox to make bootable usb-stick go for live-cd either PC-BSD or any other (ghoustBSD) and make it from there - it is a time saver.
Don't open doors that were already opened  

& don't worry, you will spend a lot of time with google&handbook before you'll end up with working desktop (for the first time) so don't waste it for a stupid bootable usb-stick 

Good luck!


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## wkt (Apr 24, 2010)

michaelrmgreen said:
			
		

> try copying the image to the USB stick with this :
> http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
> 
> Let us know if it works out.



I tried the memstick.img to copy with the above dd command to the USB stick, but
I get the error message [coee]Boot error[/code] on booting.


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## michaelrmgreen (Apr 25, 2010)

wkt said:
			
		

> I tried the memstick.img to copy with the above dd command to The USB stick, but
> I get the error message "Boot error" on booting.



Bummer - I thought that may be a good solution.


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## wokko (May 8, 2010)

download ubuntu usb-imagewriter 
that worked for me


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## ronnylov (Aug 26, 2010)

win32diskimager worked for me on Windows 7.
https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/+download

With this program I could transer the image file to the USB-stick and then I could boot FreeBSD installer on the USB stick after restarting the computer. I had no luck with dd but win32diskimager was a much easier way to do it.


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## rogerdb2 (Oct 4, 2010)

I hate to do this me-to thing. But....

I've been working with Freebsd FreeBSD since about version 4.x. And I'm about to admit defeat.

I'm trying to put 8.1 on a couple Intel 1U servers I have that don't have Floppy drives or CDROM's. I need them for software development. So naturally I thought I'd try the memstick distribution. I downloaded the file and checked its checksum all good. I'm using a plain Jane Patriot 4gb stick.

I've tried writing this with Win7 using DD and win32diskimager. Won't boot. It boots the bootstrap portion and then indicated there is no kernel to boot. Defaults to ad0 which I know is wrong, but substituting da0 doesn't work either same problem.

I've tried writing it with a VMWARE version 7.1 install of Freebsd FreeBSD and DD. Same results.

Curious thing is if I look at the partition info with fdisk (from sysintall) it shows the stick to be unused. I know there is something on it because it boot-straps.

If I look at the partition with disk manager in Windows it says there is a 24MB partition which isn't nearly big enough to hold the memstick.img I downloaded which is about 900mb. Did the partition data change with 8.1? Do I have to write this with an 8.1 system? That's sort of a chicken and the egg problem if true...

If someone has any ideas I'd sure appreciate any suggestions.

Thx
roger


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## Hinata (Oct 6, 2010)

When I came to FreeBSD I used Flashnul on windows to make the usb memstick  (I don't know if it works on Win7 though) I found it on ArchLinux wiki at that time:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Putting_installation_media_on_a_USB_key#The_Flashnul_Way


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## danbi (Oct 8, 2010)

You should probably go the route to downloading the livefs CD image, booting that on a PC and using dd to write the flash image to the flash drive.

dd needs to write to the raw device, so it does not care if you have partitions on the flash drive or not. This means the flash drive will be overwritten and you cannot have other data on it.

Do your Intel servers have IPMI like that found on Supermicro servers, where you can mount virtual media from your desktop and boot the server from there (over the network)? If so, you might use that option.


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## rogerdb2 (Oct 20, 2010)

Okay there is something seriously screwy about this memstick image. I booted a fully installed FreeBSD 7.1 system (I noticed somebody didn't like my freebsd in lower case) Copied the memstick image to the local drive and wrote it to the same Patriot USB stick I've been using and got exactly the same result. Partitions 1-3 indicate unused and Partition 4 is 24MB, certianly not enough to install a FreeBSD system from.

Anyone care to comment on the use of the memstick version further? In my opinion this doesn't work. I'll figure out another way to install what I need.

rogerb


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## kpa (Oct 21, 2010)

It should look like this if you use gpart(8) to examine the written image on a USB stick:


```
# gpart show da0
=>      0  3948543  da0  BSD  (1.9G)
        0       16       - free -  (8.0K)
       16  1852024    1  !0  (904M)
  1852040  2096503       - free -  (1.0G)
```

I used this command to write the image to the stick, it should work on 7.1:

`# dd if=8.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/da0 bs=10240 conv=sync`
(Copied straight from the 8.1 announcement).


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## rogerdb2 (Oct 22, 2010)

That is exactly the way I wrote the stick. I can read the announcements too.

gpart reports

```
gpart show /dev/da0
gpart: No Such geom: /dev/da0

gpart show da0
gpart: No Such geom: da0
```
I'm will to keep trying?

rogerb


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## zag (Apr 14, 2013)

ronnylov said:
			
		

> win32diskimager worked for me on Windows 7.
> https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/+download
> 
> With this program I could transer the image file to the USB-stick and then I could boot FreeBSD installer on the USB stick after restarting the computer. I had no luck with dd but win32diskimager was a much easier way to do it.



After a lot of hours with many unsuccessful attempts this solution helped me.


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## wblock@ (Apr 14, 2013)

Always check the Handbook first.  This is mentioned as the preferred way to write the USB memstick image with Windows: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.IS...nstall-pre.html#bsdinstall-installation-media


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