# Can’t Boot after finishing installation



## Harmnot (Mar 12, 2018)

Hey I have done to install FreeBSD on my external HDD, but I can’t boot and can't find any dual boot on it 
How can I can dual boot with FreeBSD? 

My BIOS is legacy, not UEFI. NVidia Optimus, my external HDD is Seagate, I never format that Seagate 
I saw the disk of BSD on my Seagate but it seems not work on boot 
I usually could boot this External hdd to my laptop


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## Phishfry (Mar 12, 2018)

I believe I know the problem. You installed FreeBSD from a USB memstick and install onto a USB HDD.
In this case there is probably a problem with your /etc/fstab file.
For some reason FreeBSD fails to install a correct fstab when 2 USB drives are used.

So to correct this you can boot up off the FreeBSD memstick installer. Use the LiveCD mode instead of install to repair.
Then from the LiveCD mode you would mount the USB Hard Disk and hand edit the /etc/fstab and change device da1 to da0

Mounting from the memstick LiveCD mode might look like this if you used MBR:
`mount /dev/da1s1a /mnt`

Then to edit fstab you can use easy edit.
`ee /mnt/etc/fstab`

Now you simply have to change the device line from /dev/da1s1a to /dev/da0s1a if you used MBR.
If you used GPT for disk layout you need to use the correct mountpoints.


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## Harmnot (Mar 12, 2018)

I was installion on liveCD , iso file on my dvd , i am not IT guy so i still learn about it 
 thanks for the advices , i will try it and let you know 
I install TrueOS on my external HDD, 
I think i dont know how to live trueOS , when i boot from dvd , i cant scrool option to single user or multi user boot, it seems automaticall when i boot it to mount the dvd , 
I have another *parted magic* liveCD, can i use that to edit fstab?


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## ShelLuser (Mar 12, 2018)

Please keep in mind that TrueOS is not FreeBSD and therefor not officially supported on these forums. In most cases you're probably better off using their own forums instead.

You just showed one example yourself there: a FreeBSD installation CD can always be used to both install the OS and as a rescue environment. So if that CD you currently have doesn't support this then I'd recommend downloading FreeBSD and use that to perform the repairs.

It shouldn't be too hard. After booting into your rescue environment just use something as `sysctl kern.disks` or `gpart` to identify the right disk, then use the mount command.


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## Phishfry (Mar 12, 2018)

Harmnot said:


> I have another *parted magic* liveCD, can i use that to edit fstab?


If you installed from DVD then that advice is bad. Some other problem. From DVD installer a USB Harddisk based install works fine.


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## Harmnot (Mar 12, 2018)

ShelLuser said:


> Please keep in mind that TrueOS is not FreeBSD and therefor not officially supported on these forums. In most cases you're probably better off using their own forums instead.
> 
> You just showed one example yourself there: a FreeBSD installation CD can always be used to both install the OS and as a rescue environment. So if that CD you currently have doesn't support this then I'd recommend downloading FreeBSD and use that to perform the repairs.
> 
> It shouldn't be too hard. After booting into your rescue environment just use something as `sysctl kern.disks` or `gpart` to identify the right disk, then use the mount command.


I am sorry if that i am on this forum but i thought TrueOs based in freeBSDthat’s why i am on here to ask some seniors about this  
It takes time and days to get respond on their forum
And it more fast to get respond on this from than there ,

Yes i will try to do what you said about gparted , i was erase the partiion of *bsd* because i thought i was missing something but i want to fix what you both said , 
What should i do after mount that partition?


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## Harmnot (Mar 12, 2018)

Phishfry said:


> If you installed from DVD then that advice is bad. Some other problem. From DVD installer a USB Harddisk based install works fine.



I want to try reinstall now then let you know

Please keep in this post if you dont mind to help
Thank you


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## Phishfry (Mar 12, 2018)

We can help you with FreeBSD 11.1 and USB Hard drive install.
Well be very careful if you have an existing hard disk with Windows installed. The disk installer section is very important here.
"Auto Install" will wipe out your hard drive. I would recommend removing the hard drive if at all possible.
That or you better have a backup.

Just remember ada0 = hard disk and da0 = usb disk. You do not want to modify ada0
Use your BIOS to switch between booting SATA hard drive(Windows) and USB Drive(FreeBSD).


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## Harmnot (Mar 12, 2018)

Phishfry said:


> We can help you with FreeBSD 11.1 and USB Hard drive install.
> Well be very careful if you have an existing hard disk with Windows installed. The disk installer section is very important here.
> "Auto Install" will wipe out your hard drive. I would recommend removing the hard drive if at all possible.
> That or you better have a backup.
> ...



I tried to on LiveCD , i am on GPT not MBR, and there are just 2 partition for bsd
They are FreeBSD-zhs and FreeBSD-swap
After finish installion, i got text that missing boot loader , 
My partiion is /dev/da3 and da4 

This is the pic of the partiion https://1drv.ms/f/s!AsmKoEPFnjbNc840w0Nysu5TBvQ

I tried ti find freebsd-boot 
But cant find it by *gpart*


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## ShelLuser (Mar 12, 2018)

Harmnot said:


> They are FreeBSD-zhs and FreeBSD-swap
> After finish installion, i got text that missing boot loader ,


Well, then that's probably because the installation isn't complete. Under normal circumstances you'd have freebsd-boot and freebsd-zfs and that's basically it. It is perfectly fine to have the swap separated on a slice of its own, but it's also not uncommon to set it up within the ZFS pool.


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## Harmnot (Mar 12, 2018)

I bo


ShelLuser said:


> Well, then that's probably because the installation isn't complete. Under normal circumstances you'd have freebsd-boot and freebsd-zfs and that's basically it. It is perfectly fine to have the swap separated on a slice of its own, but it's also not uncommon to set it up within the ZFS pool.


i boot the trueOS from dvd (iso) file 
I think i want tk try install again for img on my usb stick, 

I get some comments from unix stackexchange about my question this , there is someone say that rEFind can’t boot on bios legacy , is that correct? 
And it might never work on legacy


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## balanga (Mar 12, 2018)

Harmnot said:


> Hey i have done to install BSD on my external HDD, but i can’t boot and cant find any dual boot on it
> How can i can dual boot with BSD ?
> 
> My Bios is Legacy not uefi , nvidia optimus, my external HDD is Seagate , i never format that seagate
> ...



Could you say what your hardware setup is and exactly which FreeBSD image you used?

I would always recommend using a mini-memstick image but it all depends on you own circumstances.


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## Harmnot (Mar 12, 2018)

balanga said:


> Could you say what your hardware setup is and exactly which FreeBSD image you used?
> 
> I would always recommend using a mini-memstick image but it all depends on you own circumstances.


It was trueOS 17.02 stable version , i am trying to install from img file now 

When i use dvd to boot i should chooce what nunber the cd , it seems the file seperate. On dvd when i burn it and boot it


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## balanga (Mar 20, 2018)

ShelLuser said:


> Please keep in mind that TrueOS is not FreeBSD and therefor not officially supported on these forums. In most cases you're probably better off using their own forums instead.



As far as I'm concerned TrueOS **is* * FreeBSD, but it uses an unsupported version of FreeBSD (12.0). For a newbie who needs FreeBSD with a GUI, it provides an ideal introduction. Going through the manual installation of xorg and some combination of Window Manager and Desktop Environment might be enough to put many people off.  I've installed TrueOS and am really impressed with it but interested in what elements I need to build my own version of TrueOS on top of a basic FreeBSD installation.


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## ShelLuser (Mar 20, 2018)

balanga said:


> As far as I'm concerned TrueOS **is* * FreeBSD, but it uses an unsupported version of FreeBSD (12.0).


Well, you'd be wrong.

Reading that brings me back to SuSE; a Linux distribution which also tried to do things "easier", and in all fairness they did a decent job. The only problem though was that if you knew how to configure regular services such as Apache, Bind or even IPTables then all that expertise would be useless on SuSE because they did things completely different.

This seems no different. Knowing how PKGNG works is sufficient on FreeBSD but it is by no means a guarantee to know how to cope with AppCafe (what a name  ).

And it is for that reason why the subject of FreeBSD derivatives are best left to their own fora instead of this one. Because just because something works on FreeBSD is by no guarantee for other versions.


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## balanga (Mar 20, 2018)

ShelLuser said:


> Well, you'd be wrong.
> 
> This seems no different. Knowing how PKGNG works is sufficient on FreeBSD but it is by no means a guarantee to know how to cope with AppCafe (what a name  ).



I've never used AppCafe. PKG has always worked as expected.


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