Ghostbsd will not install on Mac Mini

Questions about the installation of FreeBSD
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kenw
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2016 6:05 am

Ghostbsd will not install on Mac Mini

Post by kenw »

I have been trying to install GhostBSD on to my Mac Mini 3.1.
Copying the image to a usb stick with dd produces an image but it does not work. Looking at the image produced with Gparted shows the GBSD partiton with a hidden/unknown partition before and after it.
Using unetbootin produces an image that the computer recognizes and tries to boot from but give this error message
Welcome to Grub
Error invalid arch-independant ELF magic
Entering rescue mode
Grub rescue>
Where do I go from here?
ASX
Posts: 988
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 12:46 pm

Re: Ghostbsd will not install on Mac Mini

Post by ASX »

kenw wrote: Looking at the image produced with Gparted shows the GBSD partiton with a hidden/unknown partition before and after it.
Hmm ... please post a screenshot ... to my knowledge there are no unknown partitions in GhostBSD ISO images, ... unless you mean a image 'corrupted' from unetbootin, if that is the case you can safely avoid the screenshot.
Using unetbootin produces an image that the computer recognizes and tries to boot from but give this error message
Welcome to Grub
Error invalid arch-independant ELF magic
Entering rescue mode
Grub rescue>
Where do I go from here?
I have no idea about what unetbootin is doing nor I'm going to debug it. using 'dd' is the only supported and recommended way to transfer the ISO onto a USB stick.
kenw
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2016 6:05 am

Re: Ghostbsd will not install on Mac Mini

Post by kenw »

I have installed TrueOS and tried "dd" with it,
As root I used " dd GohstBSD10.3-RELEASE-20160827-182745--xfce-amd64.iso of=/dev/da1 bs=1m conv=sync" this said it had carried out the operation.
Trying to boot from the USB by holding down the "ALT key" produces a white screen . A normal boot with the USB stick attached produces a white screen the computer does even try to boot TrueOS.
I have attached the out put from disc manager
Attachments
disk.png
disk.png (26.79 KiB) Viewed 7517 times
ASX
Posts: 988
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 12:46 pm

Re: Ghostbsd will not install on Mac Mini

Post by ASX »

ok, now I understand: gparted is at fault!

This is my output after dd-ing the same iso image on a usb stick:

Code: Select all

# gpart show -p /dev/da1
=>     64  3546227    da1  GPT  (7.5G) [CORRUPT]
       64     1464  da1p1  ms-basic-data  (732K)
     1528     5760  da1p2  efi  (2.8M)
     7288  3538400  da1p3  apple-hfs  (1.7G)
  3545688      600  da1p4  ms-basic-data  (300K)
  3546288        3         - free -  (1.5K)
you can clearly see that the sizes match those from gparted, please ignore the "corrupt" tag, because it come from the fact that the alternate GPT table is not at the end of the USB stick (the stick size is larger than the ISO image).

About the boot problem, this is not the first report about MAC failures to boot, for some reason some MAC (but not all) refuse to boot.

TrueOS is based on FreebSD 12-CURRENT, may very well contain updates not present in GhostBSD at this time, also is using FreeBSD bootloader instead of grub2.

That said, I do not own a MAC, please wait for further comments.
kenw
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2016 6:05 am

Re: Ghostbsd will not install on Mac Mini

Post by kenw »

Thank you
Ken
kenw
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2016 6:05 am

Re: Ghostbsd will not install on Mac Mini

Post by kenw »

This is what I get with
gpart show -p /dev/da1
=> 64 3546227 da1 GPT (15G) [CORRUPT]
64 1464 da1p1 ms-basic-data (732K)
1528 5760 da1p2 efi (2.8M)
7288 3538400 da1p3 apple-hfs (1.7G)
3545688 600 da1p4 ms-basic-data (300K)
3546288 3 - free - (1.5K)
Must be the boot problem.
Thanks once again
Ken
ASX
Posts: 988
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 12:46 pm

Re: Ghostbsd will not install on Mac Mini

Post by ASX »

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