# can't boot when partitioned with gpart



## longneck (Jan 19, 2012)

I am trying to install FreeBSD 9 on an HP t5730 thin client. If I use the installer to manually partition the internal flash hard drive (1 GB, /) and a USB thumb drive (32 GB, /usr) using MBR, it boots correctly. It will also boot correctly if I use fdisk.

The computer will NOT boot if I partition using any of these methods:

GPT in the installer
MBR using gpart
GPT using gpart
Using one of those methods, the BIOS screen comes up but never goes away. I can never press a key to enter the BIOS screen.

I really want to use GPT because of the filesystem labels. Any ideas on how to diagnose the cause of this problem?

PS: Am I missing something that I can't label a USF filesystem (newfs -L mylabel da0) when it's an MBR disk? Because that doesn't work for me.


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## wblock@ (Jan 20, 2012)

UFS labels should work fine with GPT.  They show up in a different place in /dev, /dev/ufs.

When using GPT, are you creating a freebsd-boot partition?  The Handbook section shows that.


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## longneck (Jan 20, 2012)

wblock@ said:
			
		

> UFS labels should work fine with GPT.  They show up in a different place in /dev, /dev/ufs.


I know that labels work with GPT. I was asking if they work with MBR.


> When using GPT, are you creating a freebsd-boot partition?  The Handbook section shows that.



yes, I am. Also, when the installer creates the partitions for me, it creates the freebsd-boot partition.

I know I'm doing it right because if I disconnect the USB thumb drive the freebsd FreeBSD boots, but then complains about missing usr.


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## wblock@ (Jan 20, 2012)

longneck said:
			
		

> I know that labels work with GPT. I was asking if they work with MBR.



Yes, they do.



> I know I'm doing it right because if I disconnect the USB thumb drive the FreeBSD boots, but then complains about missing usr.



Please post that message.


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## longneck (Jan 21, 2012)

The problem I'm trying to solve is that when I partition my USB thumb drive using gpart or with a GPT scheme, my computer will not go past the BIOS logo.

Posting the error message about usr missing doesn't help diagnose the problem because that error message only shows up when I unplug the USB thumb drive as a test to prove that I cam boot the computer with a GPT scheme on the built-in SSD, thereby isolating the problem to GPT on the thumb drive.


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## phoenix (Jan 21, 2012)

Can you post the output of `# gpart show`?  So that it shows the partitioning for both devices.  I have a hunch what it might be, but need to see that output to confirm before opening my mouth wide enough for my foot.


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## longneck (Jan 23, 2012)

For right now, I side-stepped the issue by dd'ing the FreeBSD installation USB drive that I used, then resized using gpart resize and grew the filesystem.

I do have another thin client that I am going to be setting up similarly so if I run in to the same problem, I'll post again.


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