Install fail

[rufwoof]

Downloaded the installation img dd'd to a usb and booted that and it even saw/used my wifi

Running through the installation and background messages annoyingly kept popping up to overwrite the install screen text, could totally throw a neub. But no matter, I got around that and installed to a partition, all ran through fine.

Pointed by bootloader to that partition (dual boot setup) and .... doesn't see it (doesn't boot)

Review rating

Secure : 10/10 (a inaccessible system is very secure)
Functionality : 1/10 (doesn't work other than a poorly designed install script)

[J65nko]

What are you using for dual boot? Grub?

I stopped dual booting a long time ago. Dual booting is not trivial to set up or to configure. So IMHO it is unfair to rate an OS just because you cannot get it working in a dual boot environment

You could try to install FreeBSD on an USB stick/thingy, just do a full normal install. On a computer with USB 3.0 or higher it will work rather well.

[bsd-keith]

Unfortunately, most BSD have text interfering with installs, its the mouse that is causing it, just unplug the mouse whilst installing.

FreeBSD isn't the easiest to install with a GUI, so I read, but if you want to see what it can do, try NomadBSD, or GhostBSD, both will run as a 'live' system from USB.

[rufwoof]

Grub4dos. Prior versions and that supported setting the root and chainloading.

Most of the messages that pretty much wiped out the install dialog tui pages were down to entering the wrong ssid password ... repeated tries/errors not redirected to /dev/null.

No mention of install to partition ... are you really sure and some indicators perhaps to use boot0cfg to install a bootloader, and the risks that likely has they'll wipe out their existing bootloader for windows/linux.

The way I'm currently booting is to just copy/restore the sda (ada0) MBR 512 bytes, that obviously I'd copied first. But obviously you can't dd or copy that back on the booted system. I have a mini linux boot for that, usb stick that boots in a second or two where I've copied the linux_mbr and freebsd_mbr 's to, so boot that usb, cat freebsd_mbr >/dev/sda unplug the usb and reboot and it boots to freebsd. Or cat linux_mbr >/dev/sda ... to boot to linux. Where both mbr's were copied/saved using dd if=/dev/sda of=freebsd_mbr count=1 ... type commands.

Not familiar with boot0cfg and guess that I could have located that on the freebsd / slice and chained to that from the sda/ada0 grub4dos menu.lst (bootloader).

Fundamentally would be nicer to have messages redirected away from the install dialogs, and a extension for when a partition rather than whole disk install option was selected to either add a don't-do-it warning or some additional help text/guidance about how to boot0cfg and some info about dual boots.

On the plus side, once installed and booted ... 13.2 is very nice. Picked up on my wifi, and all other hardware very nicely. Looks/sounds great. Minimal build, using twm + firefox and libreoffice installed plus a few others (tigervnc, mtpaint, geany, galculator) and with some .twmrc tweaks its looking/running very nicely.

For me the mini usb boot approach to booting isn't a issue, as that is my main boot choice anyway. Linux kernel with modules built in, busybox userland, 10MB type vmlinuz with integral init, plus a few additions (ssh, framebuffer vnc, wifi net connect ..etc.). More often I vnc from that into a main server (powerful desktop with nvidia, chrome ...etc) so my low spec wifi connected laptop runs as hard wired powerful desktop speeds With the option to boot linux (Fatdog) or BSD on the local HDD as fallbacks.