# ASUS UEFI & GPT: less compatible?



## Martijn007 (Jan 2, 2015)

Hi,

I did not want to mess-up the other threat (Landing in BIOS again and again) so started this one.

I just bought an ASUS board to make it a NAS using ZFSguru (FreeBSD 10.1).  Unfortunately I cannot install it on this board. It just keeps returning to the UEFI program.

I already put the board on legacy-disk-mode and even deleted the encryption KEYs, (possible from the manufacturer). It just does not help.

I also noted that making a bootable USB stick with UNetbootin resulted in exactly the same.

Feels to me that ASUS uses a different GPT standard in their UEFI boards. ISO9660 still works.

protocelt in post mentioned differences between laptop and desktop in their UEFI program. I'm familiar with editing BIOS files (updating PCI-modules etc) so I'm even thinking of transferring their laptop part to my board.

Does this still make sense? I already fired a ticket @ asus but they returned it mentioning "Linux not supported"....

Thanks,
Martijn


----------



## wblock@ (Jan 2, 2015)

Please stop using UNetbootin.  There are memory stick images available for download directly that don't add the uncertainty of an unnecessary conversion step by a converter that may or may not work for FreeBSD images.

I would also suggest avoiding Asus.


----------



## petrek (Jan 2, 2015)

Hi,

What ISO and partitioning method exactly do you use? Have you tried suggestions in other similar threads? If yes, and you're willing to experiment a little you can try to follow my how to:
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/...er-motherboards-using-mbr-or-gpt-disks.49687/

Although it was meant for older motherboards, it seems from EFI specification that FreeBSD doesn't use a valid PMBR record, so if a hardware manufacturer follows strictly EFI recommendations booting from FreeBSD prepared disk may be impossible. Of course I can't guarantee you that it will solve your problem, but if you will backup your disk beforehand it surely won't make matters worse  Cheers


----------



## Crivens (Jan 2, 2015)

wblock@ said:


> I would also suggest avoiding Asus.


Sadly I can agree to this. The ACPI on all my ASUS hardware is, well, it supplies you with many chances to improve your system knowledge.


----------



## petrek (Jan 3, 2015)

I think they must have gone astray not so long ago, I have an older ASUS motherboard, and I can't really complain about it (it even came with some Linux drivers on the DVD), FreeBSD works like a charm on it, much better than any of Linuxes I've tried in the past, videos play really smoothly and I have finally full control over my mouse (I need it for work, that's why I'm trying to switch to FreeBSD, I was finally fed up with Linux in this regard). Anyway, I would really try to change that byte first, I've read on mailing lists reports about other manufacturer's motherboards complaining about invalid partition table after FreeBSD Auto partitioning, so it can be the cause.


----------



## Crivens (Jan 3, 2015)

Well, I have a laptop from ASUS which does not resume correctly. It suspends all right, yes, but the chances to see your consoles when waking or the BIOS boot messages are like flipping a coin. My file server also has a mainboard from them, it was one of the few available which can use ECC memory. That machine can not tolerate powerd, it will crawl to a halt and then become stuck. Some investigations would like to be in order there, I think. And I will need some time to do so, and of course intentionally crashing your backup file server is something that is not done lightly.


----------



## petrek (Jan 3, 2015)

I don't have much experience with laptops, so can't say much about it, but as for your server it doesn't have to be your motherboard's fault. I've fixed a lot of computers, and had a chance to test a lot of different configurations, and one thing I've learned (ok, maybe more than one, hopefully ), I would check your power supply first. It's hard to believe if you haven't seen it, but one of the Intel motherboards even refused to shutdown properly with some PSes. I have an ASRock motherboard that I've got for free from a friendly shop because it refused to wake up after reboot etc. and yes, when I connected it to the right power supply it started to work without any problems. 
And there's one thing worse than intentional crashing your backup, that's unintentional crashing your backup


----------



## Crivens (Jan 4, 2015)

The power supply could be a problem, but I would first suspect the ACPI throttling. Maybe when I have a spare power supply of the right kind, I will try to swap them and see what is going on.

And yes, crashing your backup file server is bad, but when done intentionally you can first export the pool containing the backups and remove the drives. Then you may knock on wood and continue your testing. But one major resource lacking here is the time to do so


----------



## petrek (Jan 4, 2015)

Well, ACPI throttling largely depends on provided current, and this in turn largely depends on PS  It's good to check it either way, preferably with more than two PSes from different manufacturers, sometimes design of a PS is a problem, not a faulty PS in itself. Have a good time


----------



## Martijn007 (Jan 9, 2015)

petrek said:


> Hi,
> 
> What ISO and partitioning method exactly do you use? Have you tried suggestions in other similar threads? If yes, and you're willing to experiment a little you can try to follow my how to:
> https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/...er-motherboards-using-mbr-or-gpt-disks.49687/
> ...


Actually I'm using an appliance called ZFSguru based on 10.1. It has an attractive web-gui to manage drives.
It creates zfs-pools and makes the machine start from there. RaidZ1 or more. Of-course I made 2 pools, to boot from and to store to.

To me it feels that, what you mentioned, the board's EFI does not agree with the PMBR, indeed.

I'm going to try to contact the developer on that, to see if he has plans or instructions to make it boot with MBR on the boot-partition from USB.


----------



## Martijn007 (Jan 9, 2015)

wblock@ said:


> Please stop using UNetbootin.  There are memory stick images available for download directly that don't add the uncertainty of an unnecessary conversion step by a converter that may or may not work for FreeBSD images.
> 
> I would also suggest avoiding Asus.



The unetbootin part was used for an image of gparted, not BSD's-free. But thanks for the heads up, IMG can be dd-ed to stick?


----------



## Martijn007 (Jan 9, 2015)

Crivens said:


> Sadly I can agree to this. The ACPI on all my ASUS hardware is, well, it supplies you with many chances to improve your system knowledge.



I was always a fan of ASUS, except their web-site (which really sucks) and now their supportive answers keep me in the dark as well.


----------



## Martijn007 (Jan 9, 2015)

petrek said:


> Hi,
> 
> What ISO and partitioning method exactly do you use? Have you tried suggestions in other similar threads? If yes, and you're willing to experiment a little you can try to follow my how to:
> https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/...er-motherboards-using-mbr-or-gpt-disks.49687/
> ...



I'm going to check to see the output of it! Thanks!


----------



## Martijn007 (Jan 9, 2015)

wblock@ said:


> I would also suggest avoiding Asus.



I just found that the board is even picky about the PSU I'm adding. 2 of the PSU's are not accepted by it. Crappy directors board.


----------



## petrek (Jan 9, 2015)

Well, it can work in both ways, maybe your PSUs became crappy with time and motherboard is just trying to save you from unnecessary problem? Is it an AMD platform? It seems that it's more picky about PSUs than Intel. As for my how to, there's still very tiny possibility, that you will have to provide the exact Head and Sector values, but it is much harder to explain how to count it. I can help you with that, but you will need to provide the exact CHS values your disk has (it may be printed on its cover). But I think that if this is really the source of your problems, my how to should be enough to resolve it.


----------



## wblock@ (Jan 9, 2015)

Martijn007 said:


> The unetbootin part was used for an image of gparted, not BSD's-free. But thanks for the heads up, IMG can be dd-ed to stick?


Yes.  See https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall-pre.html#bsdinstall-usb.


----------



## Martijn007 (Jan 9, 2015)

Martijn007 said:


> I'm going to check to see the output of it! Thanks!


It was fun to do. 

\xff\xff\xff into \xfe\xff\xff  ... ain't working.. crap-mobo. I think i have to give up unfortunately. Bought it for ECC-support which i found it could use.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1495837/ecc-works-on-am1


----------



## petrek (Jan 9, 2015)

It works with Windows 7 I presume? You can always install Windows 7 (or some Linux, I've read Manjaro has good support for UEFI) first (setting the same partition layout as in ZFSguru preferably), then follow my how to, but do not install FreeBSD, just go into LiveCD, and dd your first sector to see what's the difference.


----------



## Martijn007 (Jan 9, 2015)

That is even more interesting! The misses just came home, she needs attention. So as soon as I get my hands on her (pc) buttons I'll report. Thanks!

Do you think I can copy that 512 bytes to all the drives in the pool?


----------



## petrek (Jan 9, 2015)

Do not copy anything, just compare. Probably you will have differences in partition layout, etc. and all 34 sectors at the beginning and the end counts for that  Just make a backup of all and don't do anything you don't fully understand  And place your first working sector from Windows here if you can. Yes, yes, her butt ons first!  Little explanation, since my jokes are very rarely understood. When I read your joke it reminded me about one comical scene I've seen, the husband is waiting impatiently for his wife to go home, when she comes in, he starts to take off her clothes immediately, and when she's already naked he takes her clothes to wash them up  I just played on this theme  Yes, I considered writing explanations of my explanations of my jokes, but this would end in an infinite loop...


----------

