Installing amd64 FreeBSD 11.1 in dual-boot with Windows 7 on an MBR partitioned disk

[Karl Denninger]

On 10/6/2017 10:17, Rostislav Krasny wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I try to install amd64 FreeBSD 11.1 in dual-boot with Windows 7 on an
> MBR partitioned disk and I can't make it bootable. My Windows 7 uses
> its standard MBR partitioning scheme (1. 100MB System Reserved
> Partition; 2 - 127GB disk C partition) and there is about 112GB of
> free unallocated disk space that I want to use to install FreeBSD on
> it. As an installation media I use the
> FreeBSD-11.1-RELEASE-amd64-mini-memstick.img flashed on a USB drive.
>
> During the installation, if I choose to use Guided Partitioning Tool
> and automatic partitioning of the free space, I get a pop-up message
> that says:
>
> ======
> The existing partition scheme on this disk
> (MBR) is not bootable on this platform. To
> install FreeBSD, it must be repartitioned.
> This will destroy all data on the disk.
> Are you sure you want to proceed?
>               [Yes]          [No]
> ======
>
> If instead of the Guided Partitioning Tool I choose to partition the
> disk manually I get a similar message as a warning and the
> installation process continues without an error, but the installed
> FreeBSD system is not bootable. Installing boot0 manually (boot0cfg
> -Bv /dev/ada0) doesn't fix it. The boot0 boot loader is able to boot
> Windows but it's unable to start the FreeBSD boot process. It only
> prints hash symbols when I press F3 (the FreeBSD slice/MBR partition
> number).
>
> I consider this as a critical bug. But maybe there is some workaround
> that allows me to install the FreeBSD 11.1 as a second OS without
> repartitioning the entire disk?
>
> My hardware is an Intel Core i7 4790 3.6GHz based machine with 16GB
> RAM. The ada0 disk is 238GB SanDisk SD8SBAT256G1122 (SSD).
>
You have to do the partitioning and then install FreeBSD's boot manager 
by hand.  It /does /work; I ran into the same thing with my Lenovo X220 
and was able to manually install it, which works fine to dual-boot 
between Windows and FreeBSD-11.  I had to do it manually because the 
installer detected that the X220 was UEFI capable and insisted on 
GPT-partitioning the disk, which is incompatible with dual-boot and the 
existing MBR-partitioned Windows installation.

You want the partition layout to look like this:

$ gpart show
=>       63  500118129  ada0  MBR  (238G)
          63    4208967     1  ntfs  (2.0G)
     4209030  307481727     2  ntfs  (147G)
   311690757          3        - free -  (1.5K)
   311690760  165675008     3  freebsd  [active]  (79G)
   477365768     808957        - free -  (395M)
   478174725   21928725     4  ntfs  (10G)
   500103450      14742        - free -  (7.2M)

=>        0  165675008  ada0s3  BSD  (79G)
           0    8388608       1  freebsd-ufs  (4.0G)
     8388608  136314880       2  freebsd-ufs  (65G)
   144703488   20971519       4  freebsd-swap  (10G)
   165675007          1          - free -  (512B)

MBR has only four partitions; the "standard" Windows (7+) install uses 
/three. /The "boot"/repair area, the main partition and, on most 
machines, a "recovery" partition.  That usually leaves partition 3 free 
which is where I stuck FreeBSD.   Note that you must then set up slices 
on Partition 3 (e.g. root/usr/swap) as usual.


-- 
Karl Denninger
karl at denninger.net <mailto:karl at denninger.net>
/The Market Ticker/
/[S/MIME encrypted email preferred]/
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