We successfully created a bootable live USB w/ GhostBSD (w/ Rufus). After the OS began installing NVIDIA graphics drivers, I would get a few critical errors alongside other warnings on top. See photo below:

I'm not entirely sure if it's my machine alone or the drivers itself being faulty. We've tried this process times and the same errors keep popping up. To be absolutely sure it isn't my computer, however, I've dumped my specs from "systeminfo" and task manager here:

OS Name: Microsoft Windows 11 Home
OS Version: 10.0.22631 N/A Build 22631
OS Manufacturer: Microsoft Corporation
OS Configuration: Standalone Workstation
OS Build Type: Multiprocessor Free
Registered Organization: N/A
Original Install Date: 30/09/2022, 22:40:06
System Boot Time: 19/01/2025, 20:24:26
System Manufacturer: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
System Model: ROG Strix G512LI_G512LI
System Type: x64-based PC
Processor(s): 1 Processor(s) Installed.
[01]: Intel64 Family 6 Model 165 Stepping 2 GenuineIntel 2592 Mhz
BIOS Version: American Megatrends Inc. G512LI.311, 28/04/2021
Windows Directory: C:\WINDOWS
System Directory: C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device: \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Total Physical Memory: 32.555 MB
Available Physical Memory: 26.817 MB
Virtual Memory: Max Size: 65.110 MB
Virtual Memory: Available: 59.558 MB
Virtual Memory: In Use: 5.552 MB
Page File Location(s): C:\pagefile.sys
Hotfix(s): 7 Hotfix(s) Installed.
[01]: KB5045935
[02]: KB5049624
[03]: KB5012170
[04]: KB5027397
[05]: KB5050021
[06]: KB5046729
[07]: KB5050113
Network Card(s): 3 NIC(s) Installed.
[01]: Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz
Connection Name: Wi-Fi
DHCP Enabled: Yes
[02]: Realtek PCIe GbE Family Controller
Connection Name: Ethernet
Status: Media disconnected
[03]: Bluetooth Device (Personal Area Network)
Connection Name: Bluetooth Network Connection
Status: Media disconnected
Hyper-V Requirements: VM Monitor Mode Extensions: Yes
Virtualization Enabled In Firmware: Yes
Second Level Address Translation: Yes
Data Execution Prevention Available: Yes

Specifications w/ my NVIDIA Graphics and CPU:
GPU:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti

Driver version:    31.0.15.4584
Driver date:    11/10/2023
DirectX version:    12 (FL 12.1)

CPU:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10750H CPU @ 2.60GHz

Base speed:    2,59 GHz
Sockets:    1
Cores:    6
Logical processors:    12
Virtualization:    Enabled
L1 cache:    384 KB
L2 cache:    1,5 MB
L3 cache:    12,0 MB

Utilization    49%
Speed    3,96 GHz
Up time    0:00:12:17
Processes    204
Threads    3011
Handles    105998

If anyone could figure out what is going on, that would be of great help! Thanks in advanced.

A couple of starting point questions:

  • Did you select the GhostBSD.iso or GhostBSD-XFCE.iso?

  • Do you happen to see which nVidia driver it loads?

The nVidia Geforce GTX 1650ti may be incorrectly matched with its driver.

Presently the nVidia Geforce GTX 1650ti is supported by:

  • nvidia-driver-470
    AND
  • nvidia-driver-550

Thanks for your help!

For my AMD/nVidia system on XFCE...

The graphical environment fails and you're left in a command line. Hit enter a few times to confirm you're at a prompt.

ghostbsd@livecd ~>
ghostbsd@livecd ~>
ghostbsd@livecd ~>

Become root with an su command

ghostbsd@livecd ~> su

root@livecd /h/ghostbsd#

Remove current nVidia meta driver
pkg delete nvidia-driver

(This assumes GhostBSD-XFCE.iso may need specific driver if GhostBSD.iso)
pkg delete nvidia-driver-550

kldunload nvidia
(Remove the incorrect driver in memory...?)

pkg install nvidia-driver-470
(Install the correct driver for the given system)

kldload nvidia
(Load the correct driver into memory...?)

exit
Return to normal user

ghostbsd@livecd ~>

(Resume Live environment)
startx

I'm very curious how this goes for you.

Hello,

We tried to community edition (we had tried the regular ISO beforehand, which gave us the critical errors w/ autoboot), and unfortunately all we got was a bunch of warnings and nothing really changed... other than the drivers maybe working(?) (seeing we didn't get any critical errors):

Obviously, this time there aren't any errors with the driver, rather something else, We also tried booting just into single user, and the shell was a bit wonky as we tried to access /bin/sh (i.e. the keyboard layout was strange and it wouldn't let us type in it).

While we did these two steps, we enabled verbose to see if there was an issue w/ the USB we were using, but to avail. From how it freezes after starting up the initialization, I'm prone to believe it just times out(?) and stops after some amount of errors, preventing it from going into the proper command line, and stopping us from dealing w/ the drivers (see the image, where we are forced to power off the device to restart the booting process). Since the keyboard layout is wonky like the paragraph above, we don't even know if we're able to escape to even to the shell anyway (i.e. we can't do ctrl + c or escape (escape actually ends the entire instance)).

There might be a few buttons we are missing but we tried every other option as well (multi-user boot) but got other critical errors as well when the screen froze (leaving us with a non-blinking cursor).

Are there any other ways we can get to the shell? Obviously, we tried at the start with the loader prompt but again, nothing there was to our help. We may resort to just removing the drivers rather than having to deal w/ them.

We appreciate any other input you can give.

    • hanseL

      • Post #5
      • Edited

      hanseL

      Quick update,

      In an attempt in trying to get this work, I tried "Safe mode" to see if that would disable graphical drivers and other drivers that were causing issues. No dice, it stalls and leaves me with the non-blinking cursor. After that, I attempted to enable AHCI in my BIOS to see if that would work... but again, no dice. I even had a login prompt with freebsd/amd64 (livecd) pop up. And since there IS no login (technically root) or password, I tried using no password... nothing. I think this is the furthest I have gone so far with this process but no live environment in sight.

      Maybe there are a few adjustments I can keep making in my BIOS? Or am I getting closer to where I need to be? I'm contemplating removing my driver from my machine to see if that would make it work.

      Thanks.