[Help] Booting DragonFly BSD from USB.
reddit / BSD

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ApocalypseOfLlamas · 2018-08-09 17:26

Hello again (sorry for another help post, if there's a better
subreddit for this I'll go there). After a successful install of
DragonFly BSD on VirtualBox I decided to give it a try on bare metal
alongside my current Linux install. [This](http://0x0.st/s44y.jpg) is
what happens when I try to boot (using any of the provided options).
[This](http://0x0.st/s44V.jpg) is the initial screen, in case it
contains useful information. Same behaviour is apparent for the DEV
images.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Download bzip2 img from [here](http://mirror-
master.dragonflybsd.org/iso-images/dfly-x86_64-5.2.2_REL.img.bz2).

2. Extract with `bzip2 -d dfly-*.img.bz2`

3. Copy image with `doas dd if=dfly-x86_64-5.2.2_REL.img of=/dev/sdb
bs=1M status=progress` to 32GB Sandisk USB Stick.
4. Reboot

Hardware: (sorry, I don't know what here would be relevant)

Laptop Model: T420

CPU: Intel Core - i5-2520M

Any advice/help would be much appreciated, as I'm kind of at a loss as
to what to do. Thanks.

E: Something I noticed is funky - dimensions it lists for laptop is
wrong. I guess I'd need to fix that, via a boot parameter(?)

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horning · 2018-08-09 20:49

Have you tried booting the box in legacy (not UEFI) mode ?

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ApocalypseOfLlamas · 2018-08-09 21:18

I can certainly give it a shot in the morning. Potential trouble being
that my current Linux install is using UEFI so there could be boot
issues with that instead(?). Thank you for commenting.

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fupjack · 2018-08-10 01:55

I had exactly this problem.  You need to type this in at the
bootloader prompt:

 drm\_load="YES"

i915\_load="YES"'

kern.kms\_console=1

menu

And then when it boots, put the lines (except I think menu) into
/boot/loader.conf.  I wrote this experience up here:

[https://www.dragonflydigest.com/2017/09/14/20231.html](https://www.dr
agonflydigest.com/2017/09/14/20231.html)

[https://www.dragonflydigest.com/2017/11/23/20503.html](https://www.dr
agonflydigest.com/2017/11/23/20503.html)

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ApocalypseOfLlamas · 2018-08-10 09:13

Thank you, this worked in getting the screen to the right size.
Unfortunately it seems a more critical issue has taken it's place - it
can't mount root.

End of booting process:

    da8: reading primary partition table: error accessing offset
000...000 for 512
    Mounting root from ufs:da8s2a
    no disk named 'da8s2a'
    setrootbyname failed
    ffs_mountroot: can't find rootup
    Root mount failed: 6

It drops me to a mountroot prompt to try and manually specify the
root, and indeed a basic `?` shows there is no da8s2a partition, only
`da8` itself. If I try to specify that with `ufs:da8` it clearly tries
to do something (other drives/partitions instantly fail with code 22),
but fails with Root mount error 5.

Thanks for your assistance this far, but with the mounting issues I
think I'll stick to testing Dragonfly BSD in VirtualBox for now :)