GRUB / boot easy problems w / USB stick

Sat Jun 2 22:13:14 UTC 2007

On 6/2/07, Fred Davidson <fredbsdavidson at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ********************************************************
> I am looking for some help to enable booting from a
> USB      stick.  After weeks of reading, and
> attempting I am at a total loss.  This all began while
> I was trying to follow the many excellent tutorials on
> encrypting whole laptop disks with GELI[1].  These
> tutorials were great except they didn't really cover
> how to make the sticks bootable.  Here is some of the
> many things I have tried.
>
> Background: My laptop BIOS allows me to pick the boot
> order from 7 devices, I set them as follows:
>
> (1) USB Key (2) USB HDD (3) USB CDROM (4) USB FDC
> (5) IDE CD  (6) IDE HDD (7) PCI BEV
>
> Attempt 1: FreeBSD Boot Manager
>
> # created a dedicated slice on my 512MB stick with a
> #UFS2 filesystem.
>
> (after fdisk)
> bsdlabel -Brw /dev/da0s1
> newfs /dev/da0s1
>
> # Copied over boot files to usb filesystem.
>
> mount /dev/da0s1 /usb
> mkdir /usb/boot
> cd /boot
> cp -Rpv * /usb/boot
>
> # Placed FreeBSD boot manager on MBR of USB stick.
>
> boot0cfg -B -s 1 -t -v 182 /dev/da0
>
> Problem:  When I reboot the laptop keyboard won't
> allow me to select a partition with the F keys.
>
>
> Attempt 2: GRUB
>
> # make install grub from the ports collection.  copy
> #over the files from
> #/usr/local/share/grub/i386-freebsd/* to /boot/grub.
>  #My understanding was that Grub can read write UFS2
> #because of patches since version 0.94.  So on my
> first #attempt I made a single UFS2 partition.
>
> mount /dev/da0s1 /usb
> mkdir -p /usb/boot/grub
> cd /boot
> cp -Rpv * /usb/boot
> cd /boot/grub
> cp -Rpv * /usb/boot/grub
>
>
> #I invoke the grub shell.  There are two devices in my
> #device map:
>
> (hd0) /dev/ad0
> (hd1) /dev/da0
>
> # Now if I try to set root in the following ways I'll
> #get the following:
>
> grub> root (hd0,0,a)
>
> Filesystem type is ufs2, partition type 0xa5
>
> grub> root (hd1,0)
>
> Filesystem type is unknown, partition type 0xa5
>
> # now before you say it, I also tried (hd1,0,a) but
> #this is even worse in some situations. Basically I
> #can't get grub to read or write to the USB stick with
> #a UFS2 filesystem.  Yet it will read write to the
> #UFS2 filesystem of the native disk.  Does anyone know
> #why? I have tried grub-install which apparently is
> #successful, but once I attempt to reboot, it hangs
> #with the word, "GRUB" printed.
>
> Attempt 3: Chainloading GRUB
>
> #This time I though I had it.  I created S1 FAT
> #partition and S2 UFS2 partition on the stick.  I
> # was able to use setup from the grub shell to setup
> #the FAT slice as the location for stage2.  On the
> #ufs2 partition I set up the proper /boot setup above.
> #I read on an old post and someone mentioned that
> #boot2 does "something stupid," and won't work with  a
> #chainload scenario.  I tried it anyways, and it
> didn't #work.  I had heard that it might work if you
> bounce
> #boot0 to the beginning of the slice instead of the
> #disk MBR so I did.
>
> boot0cfg -B -s 2 -t 182 -v /dev/da0s2
>
> #seemed to go well.  I rebooted, and got as far as
> #the F key menu, but again nothing worked, and I
> #couldn't boot.  Just to add, I also tried the whole
> booting FreeBSD from a FAT partition but that just
> plain doesn't work [2].
>
> Well that's where I am.  I can't tell you how much you
> will rock my world if you can show me how to fix this.
>  These are some ideas I have, but don't know enough to
> do anything about:
>
> (1) BIOS issues; from what I understand each computer
> manufacturer takes a base bios (phoenix in my case)
> and proprietories it up.  I'm dreading that maybe my
>
> BIOS will prevent any of this from working. Doesn't
> seem to be documentation anywhere on my manufac's
> site.
>
> (2) Bootblocks; Maybe there's some easy modifications
> or config files for boot blocks I don't know about?
> Maybe there are some alternatives?
>
> (3) GRUB patches; I've been downloading ports from
> another PC (no network yet)burning to CD, then
> making.  done it twice now.  Is there some wonderful
> patch to GRUB that makes it work with FreeBSD I don't
> know about?  Do any of you have it working? if so ,
> can I copy how you built exactly?
>
> Alright, that's all.  I'm sorry for the length of this
> post, it's my first one, and I have seriously dredged
> pretty hard on my own for a solution.  Thanks again.
>
> Fred
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [1]
> <http://www.proportion.ch/index.php?page=31>
> <http://www.daimi.au.dk/~u063592/>
> <http://www.bsdforums.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=43796>
>
>
> [2]
> <http://docs.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20020111103159.A46044>
>
>
>
>
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Some thoughts:

1.  bsdlabel -Brw /dev/da0s1
     - What is the option "r"?
     - bsdlabel is supposed to create standard label which probably
means creating da0s1a partition (can you call "bsdlabel /dev/da0s1" to
see what was created?) So your next command should be "newfs
/dev/da0s1a" rather than "newfs /dev/da0s1". And commands after that
will need to be adjusted as well.

2. boot0cfg -B -s 1 -t -v 182 /dev/da0
    It should be "-v -t 182" rather than "-t -v 182". Not sure if it
matters though.

Hope this helps.
Andrey