# HP EliteBook 2540p installation problem



## chiqui (Jun 10, 2015)

Hello FreeBSD people,

I have a laptop as I said above and trying to install FreeBSD. I have a booting problem. I have been searching about this and realized (found out) that there is a bug which is given on the website below;
http://people.freebsd.org/~bms/dump/freebsd-boot-regression/README.txt​
It mentions the workaround for this specific laptop however I do not quite understand and I am not sure what exactly the procedure is. 

Is there anybody who can guide me  more (detailed way) about this issue to install on my laptop please?

Thanks,

PC,


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## SirDice (Jun 10, 2015)

That issue is only in combination with SYSLINUX, which FreeBSD does not use.

Please post details of the issue you're having.


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## chiqui (Jun 10, 2015)

I tried all release of the FreeBSD. I am trying to boot from usb (I dont have cd-drive), and as soon as the pc about to boot it is re-setting itself and restarting to the boot menu options again. So basically I dont even see FreeBSD boot menu. I searched the issue and I saw the website above that I have referred. The description well suits completely.

Note that I tried many Operating systems including many linux distros and windows and I dont think that there is a problem with the computer at this moment.

Thanks,

PC,


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## SirDice (Jun 11, 2015)

Which image did you use? It sounds like you tried the IA64 images. Those are for Itanium processors, it's AMD64 if you want the 64 bit version. Yes, it works on Intel 64 too. Because AMD was the first the architecture got named that way.


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## chiqui (Jun 11, 2015)

SirDice,

These are the links that I have been trying to install (that's what i meant by all release). I even tried the 32 bit version of these release as well. So again I can't boot up and proceed to the installation. I thought it is related to the link that I provided in my first post.

Do you think that there is no bug about the boot-up? So if there is a really bug, or anything else (which I have no idea at this point), would it be possible to find a way to boot and so I can install it on my pc?

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/10.1/
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/9.3/
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/8.4/
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/11.0/

Thanks,

PC,


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## shepper (Jun 12, 2015)

The answer is in the link you provided:


> For affected HP laptops, one workaround is to prepare the system by booting
> from a mfsBSD 8.3 ISO image and installing the new release from within the
> mfsBSD root image by manually extracting its '*.txz' distribution files
> into a root filesystem created manually or by its "zfsinstall" script.
> ...



It also might be possible to remove the hard drive, do the install on another machine and then return the hard drive to the HP laptop.


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## SirDice (Jun 12, 2015)

chiqui said:


> ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/10.1/
> ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/9.3/
> ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/8.4/


Any one of these should be fine. But which image did you try? For USB you should use the memstick image. The images are now available as UEFI boot and legacy boot. Which one did you try?


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## chiqui (Jun 12, 2015)

shepper,

               I know the answer is in the link I have provided but as I said in my first post I need more detailed explanation (instruction) to follow. For example is that something Gentoo installation such as creating some directories (/boot, /home, /usr etc..) under the /mnt/gentoo directory. Of course I have assumed that you have separate partition for all these. This is the reason I am asking little bit more detailed instruction to follow.

SirDice,

              I have used memstick image for the releases I have mentioned (10.1, 9.3 etc...) and I have used the  "Win32 Disk Imager" as I provide the link below. One possible problem might be that disk software doesnt do the job well but I think this is less likely. Also I am unable to install the FreeBSD on another pc and put back to the one that I am having problem with. By the way I have tried so far just legacy boot. I am not sure whether or or not my pc supports EFI boot. In fact I am not sure what exactly is that. Let me do my research first and I ll let you know. 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

Thanks,

PC,


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## chiqui (Jun 12, 2015)

I just checked. Yes there is a support for UEFI boot however when I enable that option it says


```
Warning
The "UEFI Boot" option on this system is provided for development purposes only and is currently NOT fully supported or warranted by HP. Preboot Authentication and Drive Lock are currently NOT supported under the UEFI Boot mode. HP strongly recommends disabling Preboot Authentication and Drive Lock bfore enabling UEFI Boot on this system.
```

So I am not sure trying this will make any difference. As far as I can understand I need more detailed instruction than this link provides.
http://people.freebsd.org/~bms/dump/freebsd-boot-regression/README.txt


Thanks,

PC,


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## shepper (Jun 12, 2015)

chiqui said:


> I need more detailed explanation (instruction) to follow. For example is that something Gentoo installation such as creating some directories (/boot, /home, /usr etc..) under the /mnt/gentoo directory. Of course I have assumed that you have separate partition for all these. This is the reason I am asking little bit more detailed instruction to follow.



There is a section in the FreeBSD Handbook on partitioning.  My sense is that you can use the 8.3 installation image but you will likely need to manually partition from the shell prompt.  The next step would be to mount the partitions and extract the 10.1 install sets   It looks like the default is to have 3 partitions, "/boot", "/ "(aka root) and a "swap" partition.  /etc/fstab entries will need to be made.

One thing I am not clear on is installing the boot loader - can the 10.1 gpt boot loader be used or is the 8.3 boot code recommended?


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## chiqui (Jun 12, 2015)

I am guessing you are talking about the mfsBSD 8.3. In this case again I need a certain knowledge about the partitions that I need to create ( /, /boot, /usr, even may be some others). And your question 


shepper said:


> One thing I am not clear on is installing the boot loader - can the 10.1 gpt boot loader be used or is the 8.3 boot code recommended?


is so right.
Honestly I was so hopeful from FreeBSD 11.0 (even though it is not release "for testing only"), but obviously it didnt work either. I hope the issue will be solved soon because I really liked it on my virtual machine.

Thanks,

PC,


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## junovitch@ (Jun 15, 2015)

Just a thought to add, is there a BIOS update for your laptop that helps with boot related issues?


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## chiqui (Jun 15, 2015)

Junovitch,

I checked it, and all I can see is Upgrade Bay Hard drive boot was enabled (even though I searched for it I still have no idea what it does). I also specifically checked for the BIOS update or upgrade, I couldn't see that kind of menu (I dont have much of an experience for updating or upgrading a BIOS so I don't know what to expect).

Let me note the things which are suspicious to me (may be they might be issues), because I don't have a lot of knowledge on them.

a) PXE internal NIC boot was enabled
b) UEFI boot mode is not enabled (which I mentioned about this in my previous post)
c) Disk Sanitizer (again I dont know what it does even though I searched for it), and when I select it, the menu comes with the two options (Notebook Upgrade Bay and cancel)

I am not sure I could give you a clue 

One another thing I am suspicious about is that, could it be possible that the software I am using for img to usb is not working properly (In this case as I said before it is Win32DiskImager (I have provided the link in my previous posts as well ). )?

Thanks,

PC,


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## chiqui (Jun 18, 2015)

So I am guessing there is a real bug going on here. The developers should be aware of that. Whatever I tried it just doesn't boot up  and I even tried the version 8.0.

At least is there any manual install guide?

Thanks,

PC,


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## junovitch@ (Jun 19, 2015)

chiqui said:


> ...
> I checked it, and all I can see is Upgrade Bay Hard drive boot was enabled (even though I searched for it I still have no idea what it does). I also specifically checked for the BIOS update or upgrade, I couldn't see that kind of menu (I dont have much of an experience for updating or upgrading a BIOS so I don't know what to expect).
> ...



Have you checked the manufacturer's web site for an updated BIOS?  The actual update will typically be available there.  There will usually be some kind of manual or application to help apply it.


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## protocelt (Jun 19, 2015)

A quick google search turned up this link: http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/...wItemId=ob_135441_1&swEnvOid=4059#tab-history 

I don't know the exact model of your laptop so please make sure it matches before downloading from that link if you do. Also have you tried using the DVD or CD image for installing? You only mentioned trying the memstick images. Some machines have problems booting FreeBSD from memstick images with certain USB flash media.


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## chiqui (Jun 19, 2015)

For the BIOS update, I am not sure how to do that at this point because the laptop doesn't have any OS at this moment. Installing a Windows is not an option now. And I searched little bit about how to update BIOS with any other linux distros (may be live distro CD/DVD) but I couldnt find that much of information. Note that at this point that laptop has Slackware installed on it (Better than nothing right!)

When it comes to the CD/DVD iso image, I actually tried to burn the iso image (both boot only and disc1) into a usb but it wasnt succesful because there is no software doing that especially from windows environment. Unetboot doesnt do the job anymore and I tried Win32 disk writer, it doesnt work either. When I searched on it, literally, nobody is doing in this way it seems (by burning or writing the iso iamge to usb and try to boot up because it doesnt exist.)

The reason that I have been trying to boot up from usb is because I dont have any cd/dvd reader/writer.

At this point I am searching about how to install from PXE but I have a windows laptop that I have been using and it is not so clear at this point how to use windows box to use as a PXE server and try to boot up a FreeBSD OS.

My personal feeling is, installing FreeBSD shouldnt be this hard especially from a usb. I mean here you go, if you dont have any cd/dvd what will you do and how will you install it to your machine other than using PXE.

I really need a work around to jump over this specific BUG. I believe there is a way to install FreeBSD to that HP Elitebook 2540p, but I am not a FreeBSD Guru unfortunately. And the regression post that I have provided at the very first post of mine (http://people.freebsd.org/~bms/dump/freebsd-boot-regression/README.txt) might need a correction because it is not just the versions it tells. I even tried the version 8.0 to install. But no luck. So this problem has been around for versions and versions as far as I have been experiencing.

Thanks,

PC,


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## protocelt (Jun 20, 2015)

This problem could be the result of a few things. For example:

An actual bug with FreeBSD
Incompatible/bad USB flash media
A BIOS bug on your hardware
Before we can figure out which if any, you need to find a way to update your BIOS. You should ask the manufacturer for advice on how to do that in this situation. The other option is to possibly ask a friend to burn the FreeBSD CD/DVD install media for you and try installing with that. Keep in mind that the developers of FreeBSD try very hard to make the operating system as compatible as they can with the most hardware possible. Given most PC hardware is developed, tested and supported against Windows only, bugs will always show up from time to time on various hardware and hardware configurations. Linux gets around this a lot of the time because of the sheer amount of developers as well as actual first line support from some OEMs/Manufacturers.


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## chiqui (Jun 20, 2015)

protocelt said:


> Keep in mind that the developers of FreeBSD try very hard to make the operating system as compatible as they can with the most hardware possible. Given most PC hardware is developed, tested and supported against Windows only, bugs will always show up from time to time on various hardware and hardware configurations.


I am very sorry if I sound mean. I didn't mean to. I really appreciate the FreeBSD developers and their work (I have been and I will). That's why I think I am really eager to install it on my box. I mean, yes, I have been trying other things, but my end goal is really use FreeBSD as my everyday system. 



protocelt said:


> You should ask the manufacturer for advice on how to do that in this situation. The other option is to possibly ask a friend to burn the FreeBSD CD/DVD install media for you and try installing with that.


I don't have any optical reader such as CD/DVD reader/writer. 

I found another link having the same issue as well. But the person who had this problem get away from that by using PXE installation. I don't know how exactly he/she did that. 
Here is the link http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-sysinstall/2014-August/001047.html. 
Of course my priority is to install without PXE first  because it seems there might be some problems during the install.



protocelt said:


> This problem could be the result of a few things. For example:
> 
> An actual bug with FreeBSD
> Incompatible/bad USB flash media
> A BIOS bug on your hardware


I have tried a few different brand of usb drive to install. 
So two options either that specific brand of machine (Elitebook series) has problems which could be in the BIOS or any other thing in the hardware or there is a really bug. Since I have found another Elitebook problem (exactly the same type of problem), I believe those machines have specific problems somewhere in the hardware (may be in the usb channels).  

Thanks,

PC,


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## protocelt (Jun 20, 2015)

chiqui said:


> I am very sorry if I sound mean. I didn't mean to. I really appreciate the FreeBSD developers and their work (I have been and I will). That's why I think I am really eager to install it on my box. I mean, yes, I have been trying other things, but my end goal is really use FreeBSD as my everyday system.



No need to be sorry and you didn't sound mean, just frustrated. I can understand that. Do you have a CD/DVD burner on the laptop your trying to install FreeBSD on?


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## chiqui (Jun 20, 2015)

No I don't have any optical-reader or writer on the computer that I want the FreeBSD on. I have just usb drive ports. 

Thanks,

PC,


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## chiqui (Jun 20, 2015)

I just updated the computer BIOS to the most current one. And I tried to install FreeBSD_10.1.img again and this time it gave me

```
error 1 lba 2868372916
Invalid format

FreeBSD/x86 boot
Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel
boot:
error 1 lba 3195351320
No /boot/kernel/kernel
```
 

PC,


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## tobik@ (Jun 20, 2015)

Can you try booting one of PC-BSD's images? http://www.pcbsd.org/en/download.html

I know that the article you posted mentions that it won't boot after the install, but it also suggests that the image boots. This would give you a live FreeBSD environment on your system from which you might be able to manually install FreeBSD (if you don't like PC-BSD) and work out how to boot it.


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## Juha Nurmela (Jun 28, 2015)

Is there a CMOS setting "AHCI or IDE" ? Had some trouble with Probook 6550b, and that setting _seemed_ to help. Cannot remember the details, sorry.

Juha


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## shepper (Jun 28, 2015)

I recently installed 10.1/i386 to a laptop with the standard ufs file system.  Installation seemed to go normally but the new install would not boot.  I found the answer in this link and think it would be worth trying.

Essentially, at the end of the installation, choose the option to open a shell and run
`gpart show`.

From that output, determine your boot partition and use the other code lines in the link to explicitly set your boot partition.


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## chiqui (Jun 29, 2015)

Hello everybody, I successfully installed FreeBSD and boot up cleanly after installation. The only thing that I have done is to change AHCI to IDE in the BIOS. I dont know why honestly, but it worked. Thanks Juha.

However at this point I have a few problems:

 1) The computer shows my battery status correctly just after restarting which means that during the normal run if the power cable is plugged it just shows it is plugged and the latest battery level. If I unplug it it doesnt show that I have unplugged the cable and even if I use the computer an hour it still show the same power level until I restart the computer and then it shows the correct level. But then it doesnt show again either plugging the cable or battery status in real time until I restart again. So basically it doesnt respond real time.

2) The second problem is that before starting the X (KDE, XFCE etc) the screen show this message below:

```
iwn0: null_update_chw: need callback
```
 Any idea what this is and how to get rid of this message? 

3) When I start my KDE or I tried for XFCE as well, I cant see the wireless manager (or network manager) on my task bar. I am guessing it doesnt come up as default setting with the KDE or any other X interface. But the question is that is there any way to put that network or wireless manager on my task bar so I can see all the wirelesses networks on around me?

4) The last question is how to start a wireless manually? I looked at the handbook but I couldnt find a command to start the wireless manually. I am looking for a command such as 
         "command password wireless_name connect "
Is there any command like that? 

I am sorry for long questions but these are the urgent questions and deadly important to me at this moment. And please answer the questions respectively.

Kind regards,

PC,


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## Juha Nurmela (Jun 29, 2015)

Battery status is stuck in Probook 6550b too. I guess this model is not supported by the acpi_hp(4) module.

Maybe your's is. /boot/loader.conf and acpi_hp_load="YES", perhaps also acpi_wmi(4), acpi_video(4), acpi_dock(4) ...

I think you have to edit rc.conf and wpa_supplicant.conf. There are examples in the Handbook, section 31.3 wireless networking.

Juha


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## shirian (Nov 27, 2015)

I also had an issue with a HP 8440p. Would just reboot after the first ticker (the one just before it says BTX loader). I did what chiqui also did, which is set the mode from being AHCI to IDE. Just thought I'd share it here.


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