# amd64 memstick booting



## expl (Dec 5, 2009)

I have an old iPod mini that is working fine. Now I want to make it with a bootable 8.0-RELEASE. I downloaded 8.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img from official FreeBSD ftp server and hash checkup is fine (image is not corrupted). However when I write the image with 
	
	



```
dd if=8.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/da0 bs=10240 conv=sync
```
 it is unbootable and I checked with several PCs.


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## ta0kira (Dec 28, 2009)

You need to partition your flash drive and write the image to /dev/da0s1. You also need to dd a MBR to /dev/da0, which can be obtained from SYSLINUX (mbr.bin). I don't use FreeBSD a lot, so I don't know of another MBR you could install.
Kevin Barry


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## ta0kira (Dec 28, 2009)

I spoke too soon. That's how I would have done it for a bootable Linux USB. I wrote it to an SD card the way you did and it worked for me on my machine that boots from SD. Chances are your machines either don't boot from USB devices, your BIOS isn't set to boot from USB, or you use a hub that your BIOS doesn't support.
Kevin Barry


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## Oxyd (Dec 28, 2009)

That's weird.  I installed the image exactly the same way you did and it worked as advertised for me.

Can you double-check that you really are trying to boot from the stick?  Isn't the stick itself damaged?  (Try dd'ing the stick back to another file and then md5'ing it again.)  Also what errors exactly are you getting?


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## Alt (Dec 28, 2009)

Oxyd said:
			
		

> That's weird.  I installed the image exactly the same way you did and it worked as advertised for me.


Same. dd as in 1st post and its ok for me too


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## expl (Dec 29, 2009)

Can't check it now since I instead did installations with a DVD (even thow I had to move DVD-ROM around for boxes without it). Did you guys check this with a flash memstick or with iPod?


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## Alt (Dec 29, 2009)

With 32gb usb flash


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## Oxyd (Dec 29, 2009)

expl said:
			
		

> Can't check it now since I instead did installations with a DVD (even thow I had to move DVD-ROM around for boxes without it). Did you guys check this with a flash memstick or with iPod?



4 GB Kingston flash stick.

You may be up to something here, though -- I once tried to flash my BIOS using a USB MP3 player.  The computer manual claimed to be able to flash BIOS from a flash disk, but it wouldn't work with the player, even though to the OS the player looked and behaved just like a USB stick.


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## ta0kira (Dec 29, 2009)

Oxyd said:
			
		

> That's weird.  I installed the image exactly the same way you did and it worked as advertised for me.
> 
> Can you double-check that you really are trying to boot from the stick?  Isn't the stick itself damaged?  (Try dd'ing the stick back to another file and then md5'ing it again.)  Also what errors exactly are you getting?


dd the other way will only give the right hash if you explicitly specify the size to that of the original image.
Kevin Barry


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