# screen black after install



## tubbs (Jan 8, 2021)

After many years on ubuntu I wanted to install and try freebsd. First l tried to install it on my laptop that already had Kali linux running on it. After install l cant boot in to the system. Just a blank screen and when l touch any keys it just beeps. 

After that failed install i installed it on another really old laptop and it worked.

Next attempt was to install it on my stationary computer. After the installation l cant log in. Nothing happens just a black screen no prompt, totally dead. If l press F2 i get into bios uefi settings but l dont know what to do here and if the solution could hide in these settings.

Now l have two computers that are dead.

What am l missing? Would be thankful if someone could point me in the right direction.


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## diego (Jan 8, 2021)

Please provide logs --> dmesg , /var/log/Xorg.0.log
Without log is impossible to know what happens in the system

Also I would also recommend you to use this link https://bsd-hardware.info/


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## tubbs (Jan 9, 2021)

Thanks for the reply but I cant even log in to the system. The screen is black and bsd is not even loaded. l cant do anything apart from pressing F2 which opens  the bios  uefi settings.


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## SirDice (Jan 9, 2021)

tubbs said:


> l can't do anything apart from pressing F2 which opens the bios uefi settings.


That means the system isn't booting at all and you're basically stuck on the machine's POST screen. You should check your BIOS/UEFI settings, something isn't set correctly there. Look for boot options, make sure things like "Fast boot" and "Secure Boot" are turned off.


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## tubbs (Jan 11, 2021)

What ever l do bsd will not load. Not sure what to change in bios, fast boot is disabled but as soon as l save and exit bios it tries to boot and then bios opens up again. Some bios images is attached maybe someone can tell me if something looks wrong.


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## Alexander88207 (Jan 11, 2021)

I had to leave the entire boot sequence empty on a notepad so that i could boot the freebsd usb stick, maybe that works for you too.


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## tubbs (Jan 11, 2021)

Thanks but l’m not sure if l understand. Free bsd is installed already but it will not boot.


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## Alexander88207 (Jan 12, 2021)

What about switching the filesystems and partition label?

I had a problem on proxmox once that one VM only accepted only one FS but i cant remember if it was ZFS or UFS.


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## tubbs (Jan 12, 2021)

ok thanks, what fs is most likely to work?


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## Alexander88207 (Jan 12, 2021)

Cant tell, you have to test it.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Jan 12, 2021)

OP: guessing your PC is UEFI? Do you have a FreeBSD boot partition and/or an EFI partition?


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## tubbs (Jan 12, 2021)

Yes my computer is Uefi and l just chose guided disk setup and accepted the defaults. Not sure if l have the partitions you ask for. Can l somehow see that even if the system is not booting? Is’nt the installer setting all that stuff up automatically? 

Maybe a bsd installation require more computer knowlledge than a normal linux distro.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Jan 13, 2021)

It does require more work than most "point and click" Linux installs do, but it is not difficult. Because my hardware has an odd UEFI, I always had to do the install using the normal installer and then drop to a shell and follow some of the wiki steps. 

You can boot to the install USB and choose "shell" instead of "Install" and see what your drive looks like. I suspect it is set up for legacy BIOS boot and your motherboard isn't configured for such, but that's a guess.

I can't speak to whether the installer sets up UEFI boot normally because I always did partitioning and set up manually. Sorry, I know that isn't much help.


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## SirDice (Jan 13, 2021)

If I remember correctly, if you just press enter everywhere to accept the defaults it's going to be a CSM install using GPT and UFS. You can verify this if you boot the install media, select <Shell> and enter `gpart show`, it'll show a freebsd-boot, a freebsd-swap and a freebsd-ufs partition. If there is no efi partition you cannot EUFI boot it. 

Looking at the screenshots of the BIOS. You have CSM enabled, that's good. Set Boot Device Control to Legacy. That should allow it to boot. Also look for settings detailing the boot order, make sure it's set to boot from disk.

I suspect the "Boot Device Control" settings are causing problems, it's currently set to "UEFI and Legacy" which would imply it'll try UEFI first then fall back to Legacy. But it's likely the previous install (Kali Linux) used UEFI and added various UEFI related boot options to the EUFI variables. This might trip up this UEFI to Legacy fallback as those variables still exist (they're stored on the computer itself, they're not cleared when you install a different OS).


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## tubbs (Jan 14, 2021)

Thanks alot for your great support!


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## tubbs (Jan 18, 2021)

Now l tried to change Boot Device Control to legacy oprom something and now even bios is not accessible anymore. Just a black screen. Anybody pls?  Cant boot the cd to reinstall or anything.


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## tubbs (Jan 18, 2021)

No worries got the bios scrren again by changing display port and l can boot tje cd again. lf l do a reinstall are there any guides explaining how to get this right. What do l have to look for in order to learn how to set the disk up.


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## scottro (Jan 18, 2021)

What I remember is that I set up the disk with a BSD partition. I then saw a message saying I needed the UEFI partition or the system may not boot. It then asked if I wanted to create one, I hit yes and it made one. This was on a multiboot laptop with Linux, where there was already a UEFI partition for the various Linux distributions. However, FreeBSD required its own UEFI partition.  
If you follow SirDice's suggestion and use legacy boot, you shouldn't have issues.  You won't see that message I just mentioned about creating the UEFI partition and it should just work.  I am not sure if you still have or want to have Kali on it. If you do, and it was set up with UEFI it may have issues after the installation. I think, if you wanted both, the easiest would be to use legacy BIOS, install kali first, and then install FreeBSD.  Assuming you just want FreeBSD though, just let it take the whole disk. (If installing Kali too, then you should be able to use Kali's grub to boot FreeBSD).


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## tubbs (Jan 19, 2021)

ok thanks, no l dont want kali on it only bsd.


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## scottro (Jan 19, 2021)

Then, I think the simplest way is to set it for legacy  bios and just run your installation, letting FreeBSD autopartition the disk.


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## tubbs (Jan 19, 2021)

Cant believe it! reinstalled with mbr and now it works)


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## scottro (Jan 19, 2021)

Great, glad to hear it. You can always go to SirDice's post where he suggests it, and hit the thanks button. And thanks for coming back and letting us know how you fixed it.


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## usdmatt (Jan 19, 2021)

I've had exactly the same problem a few times. Seems every modern "advancement" these days just makes things 10x more complicated, and UEFI is no exception.

I've had the following 2 issues in just the last week -

A backup storage server booting off USB that I had to reinstall to a new USB stick. Using GPT just caused the boot to fail and gave me a near heart attack when it continually just went straight into the motherboard settings. Seems that this was its default action when it didn't think it could boot. Installed using MBR and all was fine, even though GPT usually works without issues on old BIOS only systems.

Re-purposing a UEFI board, it would just go black after the initial startup screens (same issue as this thread by the look of it). It actually booted though and I could blindly log in and shutdown the system. This seems to be an issue with FreeBSD on UEFI/CSM systems and how they handle a GPT-based boot disk. In this case I repartioned the disk with an EFI partition and added FreeBSD's boot1.efi as /BOOT/EFI/BOOTX64.EFI, and that one started to boot fine. It was also fine with the USB installer, which IIRC is MBR.

Oh, I also had a Dell server a few months back that will only give me console output if i use `hw.vga.textmode="1"`. Again, it still actually booted blind.

Also, shout out to @wblock's page on manually configuring disks as that was a lifesaver for correctly creating MBR & UEFI boot disks by hand.


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## scottro (Jan 19, 2021)

Yeah, his site is excellent for a lot of quick how tos. I believe that he's working on FreeBSD documentation these days, which is good for we users and for FreeBSD documentation.


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