Problem installing 11-stable on a Dell 5510, UEFI boot

[Richard Kuhns]

Hello,

I have a nice new Dell Precision 5510 laptop that I ordered preloaded 
with Ubuntu 14.10, and I'd *really* like to have FreeBSD on it instead.

I've put the memstick image on a 2GB USB stick per the instructions on 
freebsd.org, but when I bring up the boot menu on the 5510 the USB drive 
isn't offered as a boot device.

I've disabled Secure Boot & I made sure that the 5510 is allowed to boot 
from a USB device.

I then decided to build my own image, following the instructions on the 
wiki:

gpart create -s gpt da0
gpart add -t efi -s 800K da0
gpart add -t freebsd-ufs da0
dd if=/boot/boot1.efifat of=/dev/da0p1
newfs -U -L FreeBSD /dev/da0p2

Followed by:

mount /dev/da0p2 /mnt
make DESTDIR=/mnt installkernel installworld distribution
echo "/dev/da0p2 / ufs rw 1 1" >> /mnt/etc/fstab
umount /mnt

It took a while to install and apparently worked fine, with no errors, 
but it still didn't show up in the boot menu.

I had created an Ubuntu recovery image when I first fired up the 5510 
and wrote it to a USB drive, and it shows up in the boot menu.

Just for fun I downloaded a Linux Mint 18 XFCE installation ISO that I 
copied to the USB drive using the same method I used for the FreeBSD 
memstick image. It shows up on the boot menu & I verified that I can 
boot it.

I'll run Mint with XFCE if I have to, but I'd really prefer FreeBSD. Can 
anyone offer suggestions as to what I should try next?

Thanks!
-- 
Richard Kuhns <rjk at wintek.com>
Wintek Corporation
427 N 6th Street
Lafayette, IN 47901-2211

Main:   765-742-8428
Direct: 765-269-8541