Booting 7.0 off of USB Flash Card....

[John Nielsen]

On Wednesday 16 April 2008 08:55:41 am fredslists at execulink.com wrote:
> I'm a newbie to FreeBSD and I've installed 7.0 on a USB flash card, but
> I can't seem to boot off of
> it. I don't get an error message, the PC just goes through POST, then
> re-cycles and continues this loop.
>
> I was able to get OpenBSD to boot off of this flash card, so I know my
> hardware setup is ok.
>
> A couple other things I tried, from the loader prompt:
>
> set currdev=disk1s1a:
> load /boot/kernel/kernel
>
> but I just get BTX halted.
>
> Just wondering if anyone else has seen this issue?

This is a known issue, especially with USB devices and/or newer hardware. 
Search the archives for btx issues if you want the gory details. A fix 
was committed several weeks ago, but still after the release of 7.0. Try 
using a 7.0-STABLE snapshot from 
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/200804. Those images should 
all have the new btx/boot code. You will need to reinstall the boot 
blocks on your usb drive, so starting from scratch with the new CD image 
could be the simplest way to go.

HTH,

JN