Convert MBR Partitions to GPT

[Polytropon]

On Mon, 2 Sep 2019 08:19:59 -0700, Thomas D. Dean wrote:
> On 9/2/19 7:48 AM, Polytropon wrote:
> > On Mon, 2 Sep 2019 06:54:42 -0700, Thomas D. Dean wrote:
> >> I downloaded the FreeBSD DVD1.  Disabled USB 3.0 support in the "UEFI
> >> BIOS", as ASUS calls it.  Now, FreeBSD does not go into the xhci loop.
> > 
> > Very good! By the way, the commonly accepted terminology is
> > either "BIOS" or "UEFI" - it's one or the other. Maybe ASUS
> > is already infested by brainless marketing drones... ;-)
> 
> Yes, that is why I quoted ASUS!  This motherboard is 7 or 8 years old.

So software support should be there.



> I have those 3 unused (now) disks, so might as well play...

Allow me a sidenote regarding bsdinstall in comparison to ye olde
sysinstall (which is no longer part of the documentation):

When I installed FreeBSD 12.0 amd64, I noticed that all filesystems
were initialized as UFS SU+J = with soft updates and journaling. Now,
journaling tends to cause problems when using dump to backup data
partition-wise (e. g., "dump -0Lauf /mnt/rootfs.dmp /dev/ada0p2").
At no point during the installation I was asked or had a chance to
set how the partitions should be initialized! And imagine a typical
"one-partition" system (actually 3 partitions: boot, /, swap) where
you cannot easily boot into SUM, have / mounted ro (which is required
for changing filesystem attributes) and use tunefs to turn it off -
no, you need to boot from external media, which is "nice" when this
option is not available...

Combined with the desasster that is vt, bsdinstall is somehow a
disimprovement for the slightly advanced user... :-/



> I think FreeBSD does not fully support my USB 3.0 controller.  Linux 
> uses the xhci_hcd driver.  FreeBSD seems to use the xhci_pci driver??

Could it be possible that you need to load a "support module",
i. e., /boot/kernel/acpi_<something>.ko, to make FreeBSD recognize
the USB 3.0 ports correctly?

If the board's UEFI does support "legacy BIOS booting", try that
as well.



> On Linux:
> p9x79> sudo lspci -v | grep -i asm1042 -B5 -A10
>          Capabilities: [80] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
>          Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
>          Kernel driver in use: ahci
>          Kernel modules: ahci
> 
> 08:00.0 USB controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1042 SuperSpeed USB 
> Host Controller (prog-if 30 [XHCI])
>          Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. P8B WS Motherboard
>          Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
>          Memory at fbc00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
>          Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable- Count=1/8 Maskable- 64bit+
>          Capabilities: [68] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=8 Masked-
>          Capabilities: [78] Power Management version 3
>          Capabilities: [80] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
>          Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
>          Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd
> 
> 09:00.0 USB controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1042 SuperSpeed USB 
> Host Controller (prog-if 30 [XHCI])
>          Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. P8B WS Motherboard
>          Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19
>          Memory at fbb00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
>          Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable- Count=1/8 Maskable- 64bit+
>          Capabilities: [68] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=8 Masked-
>          Capabilities: [78] Power Management version 3
>          Capabilities: [80] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
>          Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
>          Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd

Yes, looks like a typical USB 3.0 interface. FreeBSD should be able
to support that. As I said, check if an additional module might be
required.





-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...