CURRENT October images do not create a bootable install

[Toomas Soome]

> On 7. Nov 2019, at 21:07, Chris <bsd-lists at BSDforge.com> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 20:09:12 +0200 Toomas Soome tsoome at me.com <mailto:tsoome at me.com> said
> 
>> > On 7. Nov 2019, at 19:37, Chris.H <chris.h at ultimatedns.net> wrote:
>> > > On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 17:28:16 +0200 Toomas Soome tsoome at me.com said
>> > >> > On 7. Nov 2019, at 17:23, Daniel Nebdal <dnebdal at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> > >> On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 09:49:52 +0100 gljennjohn at gmail.com said
>> >> >> I chose GPT.
>> >> > > Maybe whoever wrote the EFI/BIOS code in your machine went all-in on
>> >> > "Legacy", and it only handles MBR disks (or disks < 2.2TB)?
>> >> > After all, it seems like "not booting" would be a standards-compliant
>> >> > way for a classic BIOS to handle a GPT disk.
>> >> > if your system is not booting from GPT disk, it means it is not standards
>> >> compliant.
>> > Interesting. So then RELENG-12 is not "Standards" compliant. While 13-CURRENT
>> > is?
>> Can not tell if you do not provide actual information, we can not really tell
>> too much. However, based on the partition tables below, I can tell a bit.
>> Those disks are using GPT, there is EFI partition, which does suggest UEFI
>> boot and not BIOS boot. There is no freebsd-boot partition, meaning the
>> standard pmbr boot block does not work (if installed) — pmbr does search
>> for freebsd-boot and will load its content and jumps on it. Without seeing
>> your sector 0, I can not tell what code is there (if any), and based on
>> partitions on that system, it is possible the BIOS boot is not installed at
>> all. In a similar way, without seeing EFI partition content, we can not tell
>> if UEFI boot is actually installed - EFI partition should have FAT file
>> system with specific directory tree.
>> To make things better, the exact description would be helpful, so the devs
>> taking care of installer could review the information and make fixes.
> 
> Right. Sorry. I forgot you had asked for the output of dd(1).
> 
> I've done so, and will send you the output directly (off list).
> 

neither of disks had boot code in MBR block, so BIOS boot was definitely not going to happen there (the regular pmbr there would not help because there is no freebsd-boot partition). Therefore the question is if the ESP was set up properly.

My personal suggestion for x86 setups would be to set up both bios and efi boot.

rgds,
toomas