11.1 RC1 XFCE installation image problems

Questions about the installation of FreeBSD
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PelleB
Posts: 18
Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2016 4:57 pm

11.1 RC1 XFCE installation image problems

Post by PelleB »

First, on a BIOS machine the stick does not boot at all, the computer sees it as nonbootable
Second, booting on an UEFI computer goes fine until I get to "login", there it stops.

There is an error message on both; "Secondary GPT header is not in the last LBA". The checksum for the image was OK, I have tried two different sticks, written the image four times, which does not help. I intend to install GhostBSD on the BIOS computer, where I now have 11 alpha, which installed from USB without any problem, and has kept running since then without any problem with the system.

Only the EFI partition is set bootable on the image, could that be the problem?

Per B.
ASX
Posts: 988
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 12:46 pm

Re: 11.1 RC1 XFCE installation image problems

Post by ASX »

Hi, and thanks for testing 11.1rc1.
PelleB wrote:First, on a BIOS machine the stick does not boot at all, the computer sees it as nonbootable
Can you please detail which hw is that ? Maker/model ?
Because booting on BIOS HW worked for me, both from USB and from DVD, so there must be something specific to your hardware.
Second, booting on an UEFI computer goes fine until I get to "login", there it stops.
Is that a "text login" or a "graphical login" ?
There is an error message on both; "Secondary GPT header is not in the last LBA". The checksum for the image was OK, I have tried two different sticks, written the image four times, which does not help.
You can safely ignore the above warning, it happens because the ISO image is smaller than your USB device, and the secondary GPT is written at the end of the ISO image and not at the end of the USB device, nothing to worry about.
I intend to install GhostBSD on the BIOS computer, where I now have 11 alpha, which installed from USB without any problem, and has kept running since then without any problem with the system.
We had also a beta release in between, could you try that too ?
ftp://ghostbsd.org/pub/GhostBSD/release ... 11.1-BETA1
I cannot recall any change related to the boot between 11.1-alpha and 11.1-rc1 ...

Beside that, because you have 11.1-alpha installed, you can simply upgrade your system and what you will get will be the same as 11-1-rc1. (The differences in 11.1-rc1 are mainly about the installer and ZFS setup).
Only the EFI partition is set bootable on the image, could that be the problem?
No, because the ISO image use grub for booting, and grub ignore the boot flag on the partitions.
PelleB
Posts: 18
Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2016 4:57 pm

Re: 11.1 RC1 XFCE installation image problems

Post by PelleB »

The computer is an Acer desktop, with a

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CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ (2611.74-MHz K8-class CPU)
  Origin="AuthenticAMD"  Id=0x40f32  Family=0xf  Model=0x43  Stepping=2
  Features=0x178bfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,HTT>
  Features2=0x2001<SSE3,CX16>
  AMD Features=0xea500800<SYSCALL,NX,MMX+,FFXSR,RDTSCP,LM,3DNow!+,3DNow!>
  AMD Features2=0x1f<LAHF,CMP,SVM,ExtAPIC,CR8>
, what BIOS etc it is, I can not find out right now as I am downloading the Beta of 11.1, but lspci says

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00:00.0 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 LPC Bridge (rev a2)
00:01.1 SMBus: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 SMBus (rev a2)
00:01.2 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 Memory Controller (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 USB 1.1 Controller (rev a2)
00:02.1 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 USB 2.0 Controller (rev a2)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI bridge (rev a1)
00:06.0 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 IDE (rev a2)
00:08.0 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 SATA Controller (rev a2)
00:08.1 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 SATA Controller (rev a2)
00:09.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs EMU10k2/CA0100/CA0102/CA10200 [Sound Blaster Audigy Series] (rev 04)
01:06.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Creative Labs SB Audigy FireWire Port (rev 04)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G72 [GeForce 7500 LE] (rev a1)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
The login in the UEFI computer is the text login, but I do not intend to install GhostBSD there, at least not now. I could not find what username and password to use for a live session, so I stopped there.

The Alpha is 11.0, not 11.1, installed without any problems from an USB-stick and it has been running without any problems since. Good to know that I can neglect the GPT warning and partition flags! I will try the Beta image as soon as I get back from work in the morning .
ASX
Posts: 988
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 12:46 pm

Re: 11.1 RC1 XFCE installation image problems

Post by ASX »

Things start to clarify themselves because it appears we are looking at differences between 11.0-alpha and 11.1-rc1;
what changed between the two ?
about the boot, we implemented a (temporary) workaround to a bug which was affecting xorriso (a tool we use to build our ISO hybrid images); the xorriso's bug was solved recently but the fixed version is not yet in ports/packages.

The bug prevented to build images with UEFI support, for this reason 11.0-alpha was released without UEFI support;
in 11.1-all we applied a workaround after we discovered the bug was related to hfsplus support (Apple specific) and that is the only difference that come to my mind, yet remain to be verified if it is the cause of your boot issue.

About the text login: what it means is that X server is failing to start, most likely this is due to a change that was implemented upstream in Xorg (approximately February/March 2017) when they changed the hw detection causing several problems (mainly to intel i915 graphics) .. but probably hit your nvidia system too.

You can login by using the username "ghostbsd" or "root" (no password) and then look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log for further info about the X server failure.

EDIT:

on most system you can install and run dmidecode to look at the bios data:

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dmidecode -t bios
example:

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# dmidecode -t bios
# dmidecode 3.1
Scanning /dev/mem for entry point.
SMBIOS 2.7 present.

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 24 bytes
BIOS Information
	Vendor: Dell Inc.
	Version: A19
	Release Date: 05/08/2017
	Address: 0xF0000
	Runtime Size: 64 kB
	ROM Size: 14336 kB
	Characteristics:
		PCI is supported
		PNP is supported
		BIOS is upgradeable
		BIOS shadowing is allowed
		Boot from CD is supported
		Selectable boot is supported
		BIOS ROM is socketed
		EDD is supported
		5.25"/1.2 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
		3.5"/720 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
		3.5"/2.88 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
		Print screen service is supported (int 5h)
		8042 keyboard services are supported (int 9h)
		Serial services are supported (int 14h)
		Printer services are supported (int 17h)
		ACPI is supported
		USB legacy is supported
		Smart battery is supported
		BIOS boot specification is supported
		Function key-initiated network boot is supported
		Targeted content distribution is supported
		UEFI is supported
	BIOS Revision: 4.6

Handle 0xE030, DMI type 13, 22 bytes
BIOS Language Information
	Language Description Format: Long
	Installable Languages: 1
		en|US|iso8859-1
	Currently Installed Language: en|US|iso8859-1

PelleB
Posts: 18
Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2016 4:57 pm

Re: 11.1 RC1 XFCE installation image problems

Post by PelleB »

I found the problem with the BIOS computer, the Acer. I thought "removable" in the boot menu meant USB, but no, the USB is a hard disk and thus found under "harddisk" in the boot menu...

Succesfully installed on the Acer.

On the other one (Lenovo 50-55) I tried to boot again and get the error messages "(WW) NV Ignoring unsupported device 0x10de1287 (GK208B) [GeForce GT730] at 01@00:00:0" and lower down " Fatal server error [51.058] (EE) Cannot run in framebuffer mode Please specify busIDs for all framebuffer devices".

There are two graphic cards, one on the motherboard and one (the GeForce one) attached. I had quite a few problems (using Salix 14.2) with hangings and crashes which disappeared when I changed the settings in the UEFI-thing from automatically select to manual settings. I had the same problems with the Acer computer (using Salix 14.1), but never anything like it with GhostBSD (10.3, 11.0alpha, and since an hour 11.1RC1).

So, as I am not planning to install GhostBSD on the Lenovo right now, the problem is solved. If there is any need for it I can experiment with the Lenovo, maybe it is useful for improving something on the final release.
ASX
Posts: 988
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 12:46 pm

Re: 11.1 RC1 XFCE installation image problems

Post by ASX »

PelleB wrote:I found the problem with the BIOS computer, the Acer. I thought "removable" in the boot menu meant USB, but no, the USB is a hard disk and thus found under "harddisk" in the boot menu...

Succesfully installed on the Acer.
Good! :)
On the other one (Lenovo 50-55) I tried to boot again and get the error messages "(WW) NV Ignoring unsupported device 0x10de1287 (GK208B) [GeForce GT730] at 01@00:00:0" and lower down " Fatal server error [51.058] (EE) Cannot run in framebuffer mode Please specify busIDs for all framebuffer devices".

There are two graphic cards, one on the motherboard and one (the GeForce one) attached. I had quite a few problems (using Salix 14.2) with hangings and crashes which disappeared when I changed the settings in the UEFI-thing from automatically select to manual settings. I had the same problems with the Acer computer (using Salix 14.1), but never anything like it with GhostBSD (10.3, 11.0alpha, and since an hour 11.1RC1).

So, as I am not planning to install GhostBSD on the Lenovo right now, the problem is solved. If there is any need for it I can experiment with the Lenovo, maybe it is useful for improving something on the final release.
No need for testing, but thanks. As I wrote before that failure depend from Xorg itself, and it affect the live media.

For those that may read the thread and experiencing a similar issue, there can be a workaround, like running X on top of vesa driver, and once the system is installed the issue can be solved installing the proprietary nvidia drivers. ;)
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