Re: Reinstall on a geli encrypted device

Marco Steinbach <coco@executive-computing.de> wrote on 2021-11-29:

> Am Sun, 28 Nov 2021 20:45:38 +0100
> schrieb Marco Steinbach <coco@executive-computing.de>:

> > I am trying to clean install 13 on a drive, which contains a
> > functional geli-encrpyted zfsroot 12. I want the intaller (booted
> > from a 13 memstick) to ignore what's on the drive.
> > 
> > What happens is, that booting from the memstick asks me for the geli
> > password for the drive.
> > 
> > If I give the correct password, the installer will hang at 'can't find
> > /boot/entropy'.
> > 
> > If I repeatly give the wrong password, the installer also will hang at
> > 'can't find /boot/entropy'.
> > 
> > Pulling the drive, and dd'ing some starting sectors seems to be the
> > only 'cure'.
> > 
> > Is there a way to tell the installation media (in my case memstick) to
> > not taste for whatever is there, but to ignore, and just leave me to
> > whatever footshooting I may be up to ?

> Solved. Looks like I did the footshooting even before the installer
> had a chance to intervene.
> 
> The 13-3a15ccad memstick image I built from source does not boot into
> the installer almost anywhere I try, either hanging or crashing with
> varying messages, while it'll work on some machines.
> 
> Using the official FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img works
> flawlessly, albeit it's still tasting available geoms automatically,
> which I rather it wouldn't.

You can prevent geli from trying to attach providers at boot time
by setting kern.geom.eli.tries=0 in /boot/loader.conf on the memstick.

Fabian