Can't boot freebsd from usb device - Invalid slice

[Dmitry Morozovsky]

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:

JC> On Tue, Jun 12, 2007 at 08:32:03PM +0400, WaW wrote:
JC> >  Hello.
JC> >  I'm trying to install freebsd 6.2-STABLE to usb device. After
JC> >  installation done successfully and reboot i getting messages like
JC> >  this:
JC> > 
JC> >  Invalid slice
JC> >  Invalid slice
JC> >  No /boot/loader
JC> > 
JC> >  FreeBSD/i386 boot
JC> >  Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel
JC> >  boot:
JC> > 
JC> >  typing "da(0,a)/boot/loader" and many other variants had no success.
JC> >  Also i tried to install manually, allocating full disk for bsdlabel
JC> >  slice - same result.
JC> > 
JC> >  My motherboard is asus a8n-sli premium, and it is capable of booting
JC> >  from usb. Recently i successfully installed and booted opensuse from
JC> >  the same usb device.
JC> > 
JC> >  Is there any solution to make freebsd boot from usb device?
JC> > 
JC> >  PS as usb device i mean my usb flash and ata disk with external case,
JC> >  i tried both of them.
JC> 
JC> I believe this has been discussed before.  The conclusions I remember
JC> being reached were that the FreeBSD bootloader has issues when trying
JC> boot USB disks (pendrives, CF, hard disks, etc.).
JC> 
JC> Using something like GRUB (yes, to boot FreeBSD) instead apparently
JC> works fine.  It's in ports; sysutils/grub.

I have sliced 2G USB stick which boots FreeBSD on some motherboards and chokes 
on 'invalid slice' on others. I did not find the dihotomy point yet.

Sincerely,
D.Marck                                     [DM5020, MCK-RIPE, DM3-RIPN]
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*** Dmitry Morozovsky --- D.Marck --- Wild Woozle --- marck at rinet.ru ***
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