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

[Eugene Grosbein]

06.10.2017 22:17, Rostislav Krasny wrote:

> 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).

bsdinstall (current installer) is seriously flawed comparing with sysinstall (previous one)
when we talk about installing FreeBSD to a slice within MBR.

You still can install FreeBSD by invoking a shell from bsdinstall
and using gpart:

gpart add -t freebsd -a 4096 ada0    # dedicate all unallocated space for ada0s3
gpart create -s BSD -n 20 ada0s3     # create BSD label able to contain upto 20 partitions
gpart bootcode -b /boot/boot0 ada0   # install menu-driven boot manager BootEasy to MBR
gpart bootcode -b /boot/boot ada0s3  # install FreeBSD-specific UFS boot code to its slice
gpart set -a active -i 1 ada0	     # make sure MBR has exactly one active partition
gpart add -t freebsd-swap -s 4G -i 2 # allocate 4G for a swap ada0s3b (choose size of your like)
gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 2G	     # allocate 2G for root partition ada0s3a
newfs -L root /dev/ada0s3a
gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 1G	     # allocate 1G for read-only /usr partition ada0s3d
newfs -L usr /dev/ada0s3d
gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 4G	     # allocate 4G for /var ada0s3e
newfs -L var /dev/ada0s3e
gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 10G	     # allocate 10G /usr/local: future installed ports & packages
newfs -L usrl /dev/ada0s3f
gpart add -t freebsd-ufs	     # allocate all other space for /home
newfs -L home /dev/ada0s3g

Then you will have mount new ada0s3a, create mount points for other partitions there,
create etc/fstab, extract *.txz from distibution media and it will boot just fine.