Cannot boot FreeBSD (8.0) from USB stick (Dell Inspiron 9400)

[Christoph Kukulies]

Here is some more info:

The file I copied to the USB stick was

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/8.0/8.0-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img

Actually, I don't remember how I got the image to the USB stick. I 
believe I used a free tool from HP
 from within Windows XP.

I will try out your method below now.


kernel messages at the time usb stick is inserted:
ugen4.3: <USB 2.0> at usbus4
umass0: <USB 2.0 Flash Disk, class 0/0, rev 2.00/1.10, addr 3> on usbus4
umass0:  SCSI over Bulk-Only; quirks = 0x0000
umass0:1:0:-1: Attached to scbus1
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): TEST UNIT READY. CDB: 0 0 0 0 0 0
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM Status: SCSI Status Error
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI Status: Check Condition
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): UNIT ATTENTION asc:28,0
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Not ready to ready change, medium may have 
changed
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Retrying Command (per Sense Data)
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <USB 2.0 Flash Disk PMAP> Removable Direct Access SCSI-0 device
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0: 1921MB (3935000 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 244C)
GEOM: da0: media size does not match label.
#
#
# fdisk /dev/da0
******* Working on device /dev/da0 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=244 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)

/tmp/l12: unmodified, readonly: line 1
kernel messages at the time usb stick is inserted:
ugen4.3: <USB 2.0> at usbus4
umass0: <USB 2.0 Flash Disk, class 0/0, rev 2.00/1.10, addr 3> on usbus4
umass0:  SCSI over Bulk-Only; quirks = 0x0000
umass0:1:0:-1: Attached to scbus1
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): TEST UNIT READY. CDB: 0 0 0 0 0 0
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM Status: SCSI Status Error
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI Status: Check Condition
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): UNIT ATTENTION asc:28,0
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Not ready to ready change, medium may have 
changed
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Retrying Command (per Sense Data)
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <USB 2.0 Flash Disk PMAP> Removable Direct Access SCSI-0 device
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0: 1921MB (3935000 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 244C)
GEOM: da0: media size does not match label.
#
#
# fdisk /dev/da0
******* Working on device /dev/da0 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=244 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)

parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=244 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)

Media sector size is 512
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 1 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 4 is:
sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
    start 0, size 50000 (24 Meg), flag 80 (active)
        beg: cyl 0/ head 0/ sector 1;
        end: cyl 1023/ head 254/ sector 63
#
--
Christoph