Boot FreeBSD-current on macbook from USB stick ?

[Eric McCorkle]

On 09/23/11 15:12, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> Has anybody managed this on an unadultered MacBook ?
>
> I've tried with rEFIt and it sees the FreeBSD, but it doesn't
> boot for me :-/
>

I have.  There's some information which isn't easy co come by:

Macs use a non-standard EFI boot process.  They search for an HFS+
partition, which has a special "blessed" file containing the EFI
bootloader.  They also set the graphics hardware into framebuffer mode. 
To boot a standards-compliant EFI OS, you'd have to have an HFS+
partition containing an EFI program that sets the graphics hardware back
to text mode, then exits, dropping you back to the EFI boot console.

You can boot in legacy BIOS mode, which I do.  You have to create an
MBR/BSD label installation, as if you have a GPT, the firmware will do
what I described above.  Now, the mac firmware will wait 30 seconds
before doing the legacy BIOS boot.  You can get around this by holding
ALT at power on, and selecting "windows" (*sigh*).

I have the following partition scheme:

MBR---BSD---+---ZFS
                       |
                       +---Swap

I do not use refit.

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