# installed FreeBSD to USB disk and it doesn't boot



## chrcol (Apr 26, 2012)

Ok, the situation is this: I am testing a USB install media which I cannot test on virtual machines and none I know of support emulation of USB sticks as boot devices. So I am using my laptop, however I don*'*t want to change the OS on the internal HDD so I have a WD Raptor connected via a USB to SATA adapter. Every other OS has no issues booting off the raptor except freebsd FreeBSD.

Here is what happens. I can use the HDD inside mfsbsd booted of the USB stick.  I can copy files to it etc. and have installed the OS on it. Last night all was fine and I could boot off of it.

Today the boot loader comes up and then it loads the kernel, so I see all the detected devices going by on the screen but when it comes to the mount root file system it fails.  I can see the detected devices and the USB HDD is missing.   So it seems during the boot sequence the USB is either not detected or is disconnecting. *T*o support the latter theory if I then reboot the laptop the HDD isn*'*t detected on boot and I have to reboot a second time as it seems it has to reinitialize.

So I thought what was changed? Today I had unplugged the USB memory stick with mfsbsd on it. I plug it back in and the HDD  is detected during the dmesg stage and the root filesystem mounts on boot.

*A*ny thoughts?

I am using labels in fstab so this is not down to the device number changing, it actually isn*'*t detected at all without the USB memory stick in as well.


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## wblock@ (Apr 26, 2012)

Do you have longer timeouts set in /boot/loader.conf?

```
kern.cam.boot_delay=10000
kern.cam.scsi_delay=10000
```


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## chrcol (Apr 26, 2012)

It's blank so it's on defaults.


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## wblock@ (Apr 26, 2012)

USB devices sometimes need those longer timeouts.  The first one is usually enough.


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## chrcol (Apr 26, 2012)

Sorry I misunderstood you, I will add those and try again.


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## chrcol (Apr 26, 2012)

I haven*'*t tested what you said because I put 9.0 on there now and that doesn*'*t have the issue, so it*'*s an issue on 8.3 only not 9.0.  I will probably at some point whack 8.3 back on and then test what you said so I can report back.


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