Install FreeBSD on an external (usb) hard drive?

[John Baldwin]

On Thursday 12 October 2006 16:02, Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:
> On Sun, 08 Oct 2006 03:24:16 +0200
> Torfinn Ingolfsen <torfinn.ingolfsen at broadpark.no> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 20:41:14 +0200
> > Torfinn Ingolfsen <torfinn.ingolfsen at broadpark.no> wrote:
> > 
> > > I guess it is (another) bios problem on the Acer Aspire AS5672.
> > 
> > Interestingly, the NetBSD boot loader boots NetBSD fine from an usb
> > hard drive on the AS5672: http://tingox.googlepages.com/as5672_netbsd
> 
> It (the NetBSD boot loader) also boots OpenBSD fine from an external
> hard drive, see http://tingox.googlepages.com/as5672_openbsd
> 
> However, when I try to boot FreeBSD 6.2-beta2 (installed on slice 3 on
> that external usb hard drive), it fails again.
> 
> Is there a problem somewhere in the initial boot of FreeBSD which makes
> boot from an usb hard drive impossible?

The short version is that BIOS writers are generally lazy and sloppy, and
their broken code tends to trip up FreeBSD more often since we use a stricter
boot environment (we run the BIOS in vm86 mode meaning the BIOS can't enter
protected mode itself whereas msot other OS's at this point run the BIOS in 
real mode).

-- 
John Baldwin