# Can't boot



## Widgeteye (Mar 17, 2017)

I installed FreeBSD 11.00 because I really wanted to try it out and when I try to boot I get "/boot/loader missing" When I went and looked at the partition table I see this:


```
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) p                                                              
Warning: Not all of the space available to /dev/sdb appears to be used, you can
fix the GPT to use all of the space (an extra 7 blocks) or continue with the
current setting?
Fix/Ignore?
```

I hit Ignore and go down to see what's going on and see this:


```
Model: ATA ST3500418AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End    Size   File system  Name  Flags
 1      20.5kB  545kB  524kB                     boot, esp
 2      545kB   496GB  496GB  freebsd-ufs

(parted)
```

Doesn't look right to me starting at 20.5k Also I believe the boot sector can only be 512k.
BTW. I added the boot flags because there were none there before.

I also tried booting directly to the installation harddrive after install but got the same errors.


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## SirDice (Mar 20, 2017)

Widgeteye said:


> Also I believe the boot sector can only be 512k.


That's not a boot _sector_, that's an EFI System Partition.

A boot _sector_ is only 512 bytes. A freebsd-boot _partition_ is limited to 545 KB. An ESP does not have this limitation.

gpart(8):

```
Create a dedicated freebsd-boot partition that can boot FreeBSD from a
     freebsd-ufs partition, and install bootstrap code into it.  This parti-
     tion must be larger than the bootstrap code (usually either /boot/gptboot
     or /boot/gptzfsboot), but smaller than 545 kB since the first-stage
     loader will load the entire partition into memory during boot, regardless
     of how much data it actually contains.  This example uses 88 blocks (44
     kB) so the next partition will be aligned on a 64 kB boundary without the
     need to specify an explicit offset or alignment.  The boot partition
     itself is aligned on a 4 kB boundary.
```

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_sector
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFI_system_partition


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