I fetched an i386 mini-memstick snapshot image from https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/snapshots/ISO-IMAGES/11.1/FreeBSD-11.1-STABLE-i386-20180315-r330998-mini-memstick.img.xz and wrote it to a USB hard drive. When attempting to boot on a Lenvo x220 laptop the BIOS does not recognize this as a bootable drive - it appears in the boot selection menu, but choosing it returns immediately to the selection menu, as occurs with other non-bootable drives. For reference, same drive boots and kernel starts on a ASRock J3455B (but the kernel hangs for other reasons, under investigation elsewhere)
amd64 fails the same way on this hardware when BIOS configured for "legacy only" boot; UEFI boot is successful.
This is likely related to changes Benno has been making. You might compare what is in that snapshot to what is in the 11.1 release .img One option is to apply the lenovofix to the images, but it is not clear if that might cause issues on any other buggy BIOSes.
11-1-RELEASE-i386 fails in the same way
Or perhaps we should just be using MBR
Perhaps: diff --git a/release/i386/make-memstick.sh b/release/i386/make-memstick.sh index 1943e07942c1..1eb5d57942e3 100755 --- a/release/i386/make-memstick.sh +++ b/release/i386/make-memstick.sh @@ -36,10 +36,8 @@ makefs -B little -o label=FreeBSD_Install -o version=2 ${2}.part ${1} rm ${1}/etc/fstab rm ${1}/etc/rc.conf.local -mkimg -s gpt -b ${1}/boot/pmbr \ - -p freebsd-boot:=${1}/boot/gptboot \ - -p freebsd-ufs:=${2}.part \ - -p freebsd-swap::1M \ +mkimg -s mbr -b ${1}/boot/mbr \ + -p freebsd:-"mkimg -s bsd -b ${1}/boot/boot -p freebsd-ufs:=${2}.part" \ -o ${2} rm ${2}.part
Created attachment 192468 [details] switch i386 memstick to mbr
Note the swap partition was added to work around a GPT issue and shouldn't be necessary on MBR: Author: nwhitehorn <nwhitehorn@FreeBSD.org> Date: Sun Apr 27 16:34:59 2014 +0000 loader's GPT support on BIOS does not seem to like the root filesystem being the last filesystem on the disk for some reason when made by this script. Add a vestigial swap partition to allow this to boot with QEMU BIOS. Notes: svn path=/head/; revision=265017
A commit references this bug: Author: emaste Date: Thu Apr 12 19:00:22 UTC 2018 New revision: 332446 URL: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/332446 Log: switch i386 memstick installer images to MBR Some BIOSes have trouble booting from GPT in non-UEFI mode. This is commonly reported with Lenovo laptops, including my x220. As we do not currently support booting FreeBSD/i386 via UEFI there's no reason to prefer GPT. The "vestigial swap partition" was added in r265017 to work around an issue with loader's GPT support, so we should not need it when using MBR. We may want to make the same change to amd64, although the issue there is mitigated by such systems booting via UEFI in the common case. PR: 227422 Reviewed by: gjb MFC after: 3 weeks Relnotes: Yes Sponsored by: The FreeBSD Foundation Changes: head/release/i386/make-memstick.sh
Can confirm FreeBSD-12.0-CURRENT-i386-20180503-r333209-memstick.img.xz boots on a variety of Lenovo hardware here that previously failed with pmbr+gpt memsticks (X220 & X230 Thinkpads, E31 ThinkStation)
A commit references this bug: Author: emaste Date: Wed May 9 14:38:07 UTC 2018 New revision: 333410 URL: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/333410 Log: MFC r332446: switch i386 memstick installer images to MBR Some BIOSes have trouble booting from GPT in non-UEFI mode. This is commonly reported with Lenovo laptops, including my x220. As we do not currently support booting FreeBSD/i386 via UEFI there's no reason to prefer GPT. The "vestigial swap partition" was added in r265017 to work around an issue with loader's GPT support, so we should not need it when using MBR. We may want to make the same change to amd64, although the issue there is mitigated by such systems booting via UEFI in the common case. PR: 227422 Approved by: re Relnotes: Yes Sponsored by: The FreeBSD Foundation Changes: _U stable/11/ stable/11/release/i386/make-memstick.sh
(In reply to Allan Jude from comment #2) > This is likely related to changes Benno has been making. This is with the existing dual-mode memstick images, not Benno's triple-mode ISO image work.