# Messed up terminal screen, vt?



## cellini (Mar 5, 2021)

Hey i am trying to boot an old laptop with FreeBSD to retrieve some old pictures but ending up with the screen all messed up.






I have tried googling the issue but can't font much. I am attach a picture.
Does anyone know what is wrong?

This i the FreeBSD 12.2 release usb image.

Help is appreciated .


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## Phishfry (Mar 5, 2021)

Check you laptops BIOS. Perhaps it is in CSM or Legacy mode when FreeBSD is trying to boot with EFI.
So maybe the BIOS got reverted to default settings because it is an old laptop with an old BIOS battery.
Just a first place to start....


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## Mjölnir (Mar 5, 2021)

Would be helpful to know the exact vendor/model/year of your "old laptop".  Did you have a look in the _Laptop_ section of the FreeBSD wiki?


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## Phishfry (Mar 5, 2021)

So you are booting up a USB Memstick Installer trying to access an old version of FreeBSD?

Maybe you need to boot the FreeBSD memstick installer in sc(4) mode.

At the Beastie menu on bootup press #3 (Escape to loader prompt) and then try the sc console.

`set kern.vty=sc`
`boot`


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## cellini (Mar 5, 2021)

It's a Lenovo G580
Manufacturing date 12/11/09

Model name: 2189

Took a look at the laptop section now and i see that g570 is listed and i looks quite close but can't see that a similar issue is listed there.


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## cellini (Mar 5, 2021)

Phishfry said:


> So you are booting up a USB Memstick Installer trying to access an old version of FreeBSD?
> 
> Maybe you need to boot the FreeBSD memstick installer in sc(4) mode.
> 
> ...


The machine has a version of windows, i dont know which.

Thanks for the tip with sc, and it just stops showing when comes to the same place in the boot process. Is there another alternative to sc() and vt()?


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## Phishfry (Mar 5, 2021)

I would try and disable EFI in the BIOS.
Your error message is for the EFI Framebuffer.
2009 was early in UEFI history and good chance it is an older 1.X version (buggy).
So try and disable EFI by enabling CSM in the BIOS.


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## Phishfry (Mar 5, 2021)

cellini said:


> The machine has a version of windows, i dont know which.


Well the problem here is most versions beyond NT4/Win98 used NTFS by default.

So the FreeBSD memstick installer will not suit the job with no native NTFS support.
Memstick installer would need FUSEFS enabled and the ntfs3g module sysutils/fusefs-ntfs

So this task is best done with a FreeBSD on USB installation. Install FreeBSD onto a USB stick and customize with FUSEFS enabled.
Install whatever packages you need for recovery.

A bootable FreeBSD USB Recovery stick if you will.


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## Phishfry (Mar 5, 2021)

If that sounds like too much work I would suggest you explore a Linux LiveCD image on memstick. They usually have default NTFS support.
gparted is an excellent exploration tool for file recovery with pcmanfm and a second USB stick.




__





						GParted -- Live CD/USB/PXE/HD
					






					gparted.org
				



I don't like promoting linux but they do have some good graphical tools.


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## Mjölnir (Mar 5, 2021)

Maybe try nomadBSD?  I could imagine it is equipped with NTFS support?  Should be fairly easy to find out by reading their docs, or browse & ask on their forum.


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## Snurg (Mar 5, 2021)

I see a graphics mode change without clearing the frame buffer first.
This is just a cosmetical issue.
If that bothers people, maybe it would be worth to examine why the screen does not get cleared when switching over from UEFI graphical mode to vt graphical mode.


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## CuatroTorres (Mar 6, 2021)

I'm not sure if you're trying to recover deleted files or just access a partition on an unbootable machine.
I haven't found a Testdisk replacement for FreeBSD yet. I haven't had the case either. For NTFS, native tools like Recuva certainly worked better.

Some UEFI related info.


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