# Macbook pro install without OSX



## maxfreebsd (May 5, 2014)

Hi everyone !

I decided yesterday to take back my Macbook pro early 2011 Intel i5 proc 2nd gen @2.3Ghz from the cupboard to make a a single OS install of FreeBSD on it)

The wrong thing I did was to choose the Beginner partitioning install in the Installation menu. And I accidentally removed also the FAT32 EFI partition where refind was installed on.

My aim is to install only FreeBSD on my Macbook Pro.

Now when I start the computer the EFI software is not showing anything, just a logo with a question mark. I cant boot freebsd.
And I don't have an installation disc of MacOS X Lion to install back MacOS and then use refind,

i am asking for advice in how to manually create (with the live CD only..) the correct partition table including the FAT32 partition. And also how to generate a loader.efi that I can put on my hard drive in order to make FreeBSD boot well from the hard drive.

I have only the live CD to perform all those things and not MacOS X installed.

I hope to get some good suggestions or answers.

Regards


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## trh411 (May 5, 2014)

I have FreeBSD installed as the only OS on my iMac. I wiped the drive, used MBR partitioning, and have never looked back. I have not had a problem with this setup in over two years using FreeBSD. I could not get FreeBSD to boot using GPT partitioning even playing around with EFI as some have reported doing successfully.


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## maxfreebsd (May 5, 2014)

Hi, thank you for your answer.

I don't really know how but now I can boot FreeBSD.

I managed to instal back macOSX and install refind. Then i follow almost a basic install of freebsd. i used gpart to make the partion in shell during the install and then just followed the script and then just created a fstab file in /etc/fstab and then I rebooted and it worked!

Now I m following the step to install package and ports, I want to use only ports to install software, however 1 thing is weird. In fdisk() i dont see the FreeBSD partitions I just made with gpart(), I just see the MacOSX partition and the EFI partition, and two output telling:


```
The data for partition 3 is : UNUSED
The data for partition 4 is : UNUSED
```

While those partitions are more than just 2 and there are in use. Why? Is it problematic?


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## trh411 (May 5, 2014)

maxfreebsd said:
			
		

> I dont really know how but now I can boot freebsd.
> 
> I managed to instal back macOSX and install refind. Then i follow almost a basic install of freebsd. i used gpart to make the partiton in shell during the install and then just followed the script and then just created a fstab file in /etc/fstab and then i rebooted and it worked !


Great. I wanted to avoid the use of refit/refind so that's most likely why my attempts failed.



			
				maxfreebsd said:
			
		

> Now i m following the step to install package and ports, I want to use only ports to install software, however 1 thing is weird. In fdisk i dont see the freebsd partitions i just made with gpart.


Forget fdisk(8). Use gpart(8).

Try executing `gpart show` and see if that output makes more sense.


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## maxfreebsd (May 6, 2014)

Yes gpart() makes total sense but I found it weird that fdisk() wasn't showing the same thing.

Anyway thank you for your help I'm going to learn more about FreeBSD and his features.


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## trh411 (May 6, 2014)

maxfreebsd said:
			
		

> Yes gpart() makes total sense but I found it weird that fdisk() wasn't showing the same thing.


fdisk(8) is old and understands MBR, but not GPT. gpart(8) understands GPT and MBR. So in FreeBSD gpart(8) is preferred over fdisk(8).


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