# Physical or emulated hardware casing FreeBSD to not boot?



## llabtaem (Nov 24, 2016)

Hello FreeBSD world,

Please pardon my ignorance and anything crass I might have typed out, but I cannot seem to get FreeBSD (*11* and *10.3*) to boot past the '*Booting...*' text from either the ISO or the QCOW2 image file for QEMU/KVM (yes I extracted it first) using QEMU/KVM. I ran checksums on both files and even re-downloaded, same results. So that has lead me to the conclusion that it must be my hardware, physical or emulated, as I highly doubt the developers of FreeBSD would put out a faulty OS. So my question is, does FreeBSD support the CPU *AMD FX-4100*? Not sure if the rest of my physical hardware specs matter, but they are as follows:

*Mobo:* MSI 970A-G43 (MS-7693)
*CPU:* AMD FX-4100 Quad Core @ 3.6GHz
*RAM:* 8GB (1333MHz per card, 2 cards)
*Graphics Card:* Geforce GTX650

I have tried changing every setting in QEMU/KVM that I would think cause FreeBSD to not continue with it's booting, but to no avail. This includes changing the CPU model, adding more RAM (I tried 2048 then bumped it up to 4096), changing the Disk Bus from IDE to SATA to VirtIO, as well as the video, from model QXL to VGA (I used this solution for another OS in QEMU/KVM before and was surprised it was the cause).

So that is what lead me to believe my hardware is to blame, either physical or emulated. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Even a, "Hey idiot, did you even think to try or look this up?" would be awesome of you.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.


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## tingo (Nov 24, 2016)

A quick question: have you tried booting your physical hardware from a FreeBSD 10.3 or 11.0 release memstick image? It is a live image, so you wouldn't damage anything. That would help you figure out if there is something wrong with the physical hardware you have (with regards to FreeBSD) at least.


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## llabtaem (Nov 26, 2016)

tingo said:


> A quick question: have you tried booting your physical hardware from a FreeBSD 10.3 or 11.0 release memstick image? It is a live image, so you wouldn't damage anything. That would help you figure out if there is something wrong with the physical hardware you have (with regards to FreeBSD) at least.



Hello tingo,

Thank you for taking the time and giving me an idea to try. So I created a USB with the memstick image file then booted my machine from it, which worked flawlessly. So there must be something wrong with my QEMU/KVM. Whether it be the installation, configuration files for QEMU/KVM, or the emulated hardware for FreeBSD. At least I know that my physical hardware on my desktop works fine with FreeBSD.

Now, to be a pain in the butt. I was originally trying to run FreeBSD in QEMU/KVM for a trial run. Learning the basics like installing and removing software, updating, etc... Then I was going to install this OS on my laptop. So I figured I would skip all this and just dive right in and install FreeBSD on my laptop. The funny thing is it will not boot (from the memstick image) on my laptop. It gets past the '*Booting...*' text, but freeze's at '*mask 0x00ff0000, 0x0000ff00, 0x000000ff, 0xff000000*' text.

My laptop is an ASUS, model *X54C*, with what I believe is the *1st generation core i3 *(I looked up the specs on ASUS website but it wasn't clear on the generation so I am to assume 1st generation). Now pardon my ignorance, but I would assume since Intel CPUs are more popular of the two, that it is most definitely supported?

I want to thank you again for your time. This has now turned into one of those things that I just have to have. Like when you were a kid and you wanted a cookie, but your parents told you no. You wanted that cookie even more, ha ha ha. Plus I never knew when to quit!


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## tingo (Nov 26, 2016)

llabtaem said:


> My laptop is an ASUS, model *X54C*, with what I believe is the *1st generation core i3 *(I looked up the specs on ASUS website but it wasn't clear on the generation so I am to assume 1st generation). Now pardon my ignorance, but I would assume since Intel CPUs are more popular of the two, that it is most definitely supported?


It is best if you create a new thread for your laptop in the appropriate subforum (mobile computing perhaps) - this forum likes to stick to the "one problem - one thread" formula.


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## llabtaem (Nov 26, 2016)

tingo said:


> It is best if you create a new thread for your laptop in the appropriate subforum (mobile computing perhaps) - this forum likes to stick to the "one problem - one thread" formula.



Hello again tingo,

I'll continue to further try and resolve this before I do. Thank you again for your time and the heads up.


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## Phishfry (Nov 26, 2016)

I can tell you the console driver takes over around that time. So i would investigate system console(4) and vt(4). Perhaps revert to sc or mess with video resolutions.
I am assuming you installed FreeBSD on the laptop OK but it fails on first boot?

https://wiki.freebsd.org/Newcons


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## Phishfry (Nov 26, 2016)

Being new to FreeBSD your probably wondering how to fix a boot problem. One way would be to boot off the usb memstick installer and use the shell offered to mount your installation and edit the needed files. Another way is to use the post-install feature which drops to a shell for editing as well.
That method is OK if you already know your fix..


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## Phishfry (Nov 26, 2016)

Another area to consider is `gop` modes. Sometimes setting these cure a video problem.
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/53150/


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## drejlict (Nov 26, 2016)

Funnily, I have nearly the same problem: I also tried to install FreeBSD 11-RELEASE  on Qemu/KVM with a Linux host and the boot process got stuck at the `Booting...` line. Now, trying with 10.3 solves the problem, I can install 10.3 just fine and it starts after the installation process.
Then I thought to upgrade the freshly installed 10.3 to 11, which worked fine. After the upgrade, booting gets stuck at `Booting...` again. After that I tried installing from CURRENT-r308137 but this also gets stuck at that particular stage.

For 11 I tried the amd64-disc1.iso, the amd64-memstick.img and the amd64-bootonly.iso. All suffer from the same problem.

For 10.3 I only tried the amd64-disc1.iso.

The Qemu command is taken from the Gentoo wiki, with adjustments for RAM and some names. The effective command is (for the non-memstick images, of course)

```
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -cpu host -drive file=freebsdHD.raw -m 4G -boot d -cdrom FreeBSD-11.0-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso
```

This cannot only be a problem with Qemu because the 10.3 version works.


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## llabtaem (Nov 28, 2016)

Phishfry said:


> I can tell you the console driver takes over around that time. So i would investigate system console(4) and vt(4). Perhaps revert to sc or mess with video resolutions.
> I am assuming you installed FreeBSD on the laptop OK but it fails on first boot?
> 
> https://wiki.freebsd.org/Newcons





Phishfry said:


> Being new to FreeBSD your probably wondering how to fix a boot problem. One way would be to boot off the usb memstick installer and use the shell offered to mount your installation and edit the needed files. Another way is to use the post-install feature which drops to a shell for editing as well.
> That method is OK if you already know your fix..





Phishfry said:


> Another area to consider is `gop` modes. Sometimes setting these cure a video problem.
> https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/53150/



Hello Phishfry,

Thank you for taking the time in helping me solve my problem. I found the issue, which happened to be the way I was booting from the USB. I was using the UEFI, I have a BOIS/UEFI hybrid on my laptop. Selecting the non UEFI boot option of the USB drive allowed me to install FreeBSD on my laptop. I believe you are correct that it was a resolution issue as booting from the UEFI boot option gave me my native resolution and didn't work, but booting from the non UEFI option gave me a lower resolution which allowed me to boot from the USB and install FreeBSD.

Too add a little more to the conversation because I just have to say this, I love this OS already. The speed, package manager, etc is absolutely amazing, my only complaint is it takes a couple of minutes before I get to the login screen, but that may be due to how I have it setup, the security options I selected during install. Definitely not a deal breaker though as I am thinking about switching all my OSes to FreeBSD. Although the developers may never see this, I just want to say great job and a big thank you! Time to open up my wallet.



drejlict said:


> Funnily, I have nearly the same problem: I also tried to install FreeBSD 11-RELEASE  on Qemu/KVM with a Linux host and the boot process got stuck at the `Booting...` line. Now, trying with 10.3 solves the problem, I can install 10.3 just fine and it starts after the installation process.
> Then I thought to upgrade the freshly installed 10.3 to 11, which worked fine. After the upgrade, booting gets stuck at `Booting...` again. After that I tried installing from CURRENT-r308137 but this also gets stuck at that particular stage.
> 
> For 11 I tried the amd64-disc1.iso, the amd64-memstick.img and the amd64-bootonly.iso. All suffer from the same problem.
> ...



Hello drejiict,

Thank you for taking the time and adding your experience. I was not able to get FreeBSD 10.3 or 11 ISO to boot in QEMU/KVM no matter what I tried, as well as the QCOW2 files. I will utilize the command you gave me and give it ago. Thank you again for this information.


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