# Installing FreeBSD on a Acer Aspire



## errandonea (Sep 8, 2011)

Hello,

I'm trying to install FreeBSD on my desktop, which is a Acer Aspire AM3400, with a 64 bits CPU. But it doesn't even boot. As soon as the kernel starts to load, I hear a beep and the system immediatly reboots. I faced the same problem with OpenSolaris but not with Linux.

So, I was about to think this hardware was not supported. But the i386 version of FreeBSD runs fine under VirtualBox on the same computer. So I think there must be a way to make it boot on the real system, perhaps by changing something in the BIOS settings.

Any idea ?


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## wblock@ (Sep 8, 2011)

So it gets past the loader menu?  Try with ACPI disabled, or "safe mode".


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## errandonea (Sep 8, 2011)

No, the problem occurs before that menu appears. I switch on the computer. It prints "CD Loader" and a little more text. A / starts to turn round. And whoop ! Half a second later, the computer beeps and reboots.


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## davidgurvich (Sep 8, 2011)

FreeBSD should be able to boot.  Have you tried with AHCI enabled/disabled in the BIOS?  How are you trying to boot FreeBSD and which version?  I've had the same issue with the usb image when I forget to zero out the start.


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## errandonea (Sep 8, 2011)

I'm trying to install FreeBSD 8.2 with the DVD. I tried both i386 and amd64. Under VirtualBox, only i386 works. On the real system, none did.

In the BIOS menu, there's a setting called "Onboard SATA Mode" with 3 possible options : RAID, AHCI and Native IDE. By default, RAID was selected. Following your advice, I switched to AHCI. Here's what happened : Windows was no longer able to boot. With FreeBSD's DVD, the following text appeared on the screen :


```
CD Loader 1.2
Building the boot loader arguments
Looking up /BOOT/LOADER...Found
/
```
And ... that's all ! The / continued to turn again and again during a few minutes with nothing else happening, until I decided to try something else.

I returned to the BIOS menu and selected the third option : Native IDE.

That way, FreeBSD boots, even the 64 bits version. But Windows doesn't. I wanted a dual-boot with Windows and FreeBSD but it seems I will have to change the BIOS settings each time I want to switch from FreeBSD to Windows or from Windows to FreeBSD.

So, thanks for your help but I hope a better solution exists, one that would suit both FreeBSD and Windows.


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## wblock@ (Sep 8, 2011)

Set the BIOS back to the way it was and try a FreeBSD 9 install CD.


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## errandonea (Sep 9, 2011)

I did this : I set the BIOS option back to RAID and tried the CD of FreeBSD 9.0 beta 2 amd64. It doesn't boot. The problem is exactly the same I faced with FreeBSD 8.2.

Now that FreeBSD 8.2 is installed on my computer, I also tried to boot it directly from my hard disk. But with the RAID option, it doesn't work at all.

Since I can now access FreeBSD settings, can I change something to make it work with the RAID configuration ?


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## wblock@ (Sep 9, 2011)

Label the filesystems in case it comes up with different disk names for RAID and non-RAID.  Hard to tell exactly what that BIOS option is doing, though.  The motherboard manual might describe it.


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## errandonea (Sep 10, 2011)

I tried to follow the how-to you showed me and label my slices. First, I checked /etc/fstab :


```
# Device                Mountpoint      FStype  Options         Dump    Pass#
/dev/ad1s1b             none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/ad1s1a             /               ufs     rw              1       1
/dev/ad1s1e             /tmp            ufs     rw              2       2
/dev/ad1s1f             /usr            ufs     rw              2       2
/dev/ad1s1d             /var            ufs     rw              2       2
/dev/acd0               /cdrom          cd9660  ro,noauto       0       0
```

So, after booting in single-user mode, I labeled :


```
# glabel label acswap /dev/ad1s1b
# tunefs -L acrootfs /dev/ad1s1a
# tunefs -L acvarfs /dev/ad1s1d
# tunefs -L actmpfs /dev/ad1s1e
# tunefs -L acusrfs /dev/ad1s1f
```

No error message. No output at all. It seemed the work was done.

 I rebooted in multi-user mode. But when I checked /dev/label and /dev/ufs, I discovered these folders were empty. Of course, I stopped here and didn't ask /etc/fstab to point to non-existent files like /dev/ufs/acrootfs, for example. Where did I went wrong ?


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## wblock@ (Sep 10, 2011)

errandonea said:
			
		

> I rebooted in multi-user mode. But when I checked /dev/label and /dev/ufs, I discovered these folders were empty. Of course, I stopped here and didn't ask /etc/fstab to point to non-existent files like /dev/ufs/acrootfs, for example. Where did I went wrong ?



Can't think of any way to do that, except maybe disabling /dev by booting in "safe mode" or single user.


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## knightjp (Apr 11, 2018)

Sorry to resurrect an old thread. I have been trying to install FreeBSD on an Acer Aspire E1-572g. The issue is it comes to the screen where you select to boot into the installer, but after you select 1, everything on the screen goes into some funky scramble os pixels. You can barely make out anything on it. I tried a bootable Ubuntu USB and that installed fine. I want FreeBSD. Is there something that I'm missing?


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