Pre-install Setup Questions

[John Gaskill]

As a newbie to FreeBSD, I am interested in getting my installation done correctly, providing as much utility to my system as possible.  I have not found an answer in the Man pages or Handbook.  Maybe one of you knows from experience.

Question 1:   Can the dvd1 iso be copied to a USB thumb drive and used to boot he install from a UEFI BIOS?

My system is a FreeBSD only system with AMD EPYC CPU, 32 GB RAM, a 2 TB SAMSUNG 2280 SSD, and two 500 GB Seagate SSHDs, plus optical drive and multiple USB ports.  ASUS PRIME motherboard.

Question 2:  Will a ZFS RAID configuration see a single SSD (ada0) partitioned into the main boot drive partition (512k) freebsd-zfs 480 GB plus freebsd-swap 20gb, plus three additional logical partitions of 480 GB freebsd-zfs and 5.25 GB freebsd-swap, as one disc drive or four for purposes of calculating the RAID configuration?

The two 500 GB drives will be partitioned at 480 GB freebsd-zfs and 20 GB freebsd-swap.

Ideally I could then choose a ZFS pool type of raidz3, but it may only be up for raidz1.

All thoughts are appreciated.

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[Pete Wright]

On 5/15/26 10:55, John Gaskill wrote:
> As a newbie to FreeBSD, I am interested in getting my installation done
> correctly, providing as much utility to my system as possible.  I have
> not found an answer in the Man pages or Handbook.  Maybe one of you
> knows from experience.
>
> Question 1:   Can the dvd1 iso be copied to a USB thumb drive and used
> to boot he install from a UEFI BIOS?

i think that should work, but i usually grab the -memstick.img's you can
copy them to a thumb drive doing something like:

cat FreeBSD-15.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img > /dev/da0

>
> My system is a FreeBSD only system with AMD EPYC CPU, 32 GB RAM, a 2 TB
> SAMSUNG 2280 SSD, and two 500 GB Seagate SSHDs, plus optical drive and
> multiple USB ports.  ASUS PRIME motherboard.
>
> Question 2:  Will a ZFS RAID configuration see a single SSD (ada0)
> partitioned into the main boot drive partition (512k) freebsd-zfs 480 GB
> plus freebsd-swap 20gb, plus three additional logical partitions of 480
> GB freebsd-zfs and 5.25 GB freebsd-swap, as one disc drive or four for
> purposes of calculating the RAID configuration?

i have a similar setup on my primary workstation. i have a single nvme
drive for my base OS (labeled as zroot). i allow the installer to auto
lay it out. i then have 2 SSD's which i setup as a mirror and store
most of my work there. you can also stripe them if you want to maximize
storage at the cost of no redundancy if a drive dies.

for your swap, probably best to keep it on your zroot device which is
what the auto-layout will most likely do for you.

hope this helps.
-pete

--
Pete Wright
pe...@nomadlogic.org

[David Christensen]

On 5/15/26 10:55, John Gaskill wrote:

While some FOSS OS installer ISO files can be burned to a USB flash
drive and booted directly, I do not believe FreeBSD is one of them. You
would probably need a tool to accomplish this -- perhaps Rufus? The
simple answer is to download and burn the FreeBSD installer memstick
image file.


I assume the 2 TB SAMSUNG 2280 SSD is M.2 NVMe/PCIe (?).


Does your motherboard support PCIe bifurcation?


Does your motherboard have SATA DOM ports?


I have a small SOHO network with two FreeBSD servers (primary and
backup) and various clients. Each server, desktop, and laptop has a
single 2.5" SATA SSD with a complete and self-contained OS image (e.g.
boot, root, and swap). This works well for my workload, disaster plan
(image monthly, rsync daily), and budget.


I do not recommend subdividing the 2 TB and 500 GB drives and using the
pieces for multiple purposes. KISS works best for me.


I partition my system drives with a small amount of swap (1 GB or less)
and try to provide plenty of memory for the workloads. When I have
built systems without swap, they crashed under load.


While the two 500 GB Seagate SSHD's may seem to be an obvious choice for
FreeBSD on RAID, beware:

1. Performance for certain workloads could be reduced.

2. People who use software RAID for their OS drives often run into
problems when booting with a failed drive.

3. How do you monitor the RAID? How do you monitor the individual
drives (e.g. SMART)?


I suggest installing one small, fast drive for the FreeBSD system disk.
NVMe/PCIe would be the fastest, whether M.2 or U.2, but SATA/SAS could
be sufficient for your workload.


For data, I suggest installing a second 2 TB SAMSUNG 2280 SSD, secure
erasing each, putting a GPT partition scheme on each, creating one large
partition on each, and creating a ZFS pool from those partitions.
Optional -- encrypt partitions with GELI and create the ZFS pool from
the GELI providers. If you need fast and/or large swap, create a volume
within the pool.


David

[John Gaskill]

On Friday, May 15, 2026 at 08:06:16 PM PDT, David Christensen <dpch...@holgerdanske.com> wrote:

>> On 5/15/26 10:55, John Gaskill wrote:
>>
>> Question 1:   Can the dvd1 iso be copied to a USB thumb drive and used to boot he install from a UEFI BIOS?
>>

> David Chirstensen replied in part:

>
> While some FOSS OS installer ISO files can be burned to a USB flash
> drive and booted directly, I do not believe FreeBSD is one of them.  You
> would probably need a tool to accomplish this -- perhaps Rufus?
>
> The simple answer is to download and burn the FreeBSD installer memstick
> image file.

I tried that first, and it requires an Internet connection in order to conclude.

I do not want to connect this box the the Internet until after it is completely
setup, tested and secured to the degree I need it secured.

Rufus says it can transfer the image to a memory stick, but I am unsure
what the result might be.

It might be better and easier if FreeBSD created and added a download
image of the dvd1.iso with its own unique SHA256. With the availabilty
of inexpensive, high capacity USB memory sticks widespread, such an
option would be easier, cheaper and more secure for everyone.

Just a suggestion.

[Dag-Erling Smørgrav]

John Gaskill <westcoa...@yahoo.com> writes:

> David Christensen <dpch...@holgerdanske.com> writes:
> > The simple answer is to download and burn the FreeBSD installer
> > memstick image file.
> I tried that first, and it requires an Internet connection in order to
> conclude.

No, the memstick image has a complete set of pkgbase packages. Only the
mini-memstick requires a network connection to install.

DES
--
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - d...@FreeBSD.org

[John Gaskill]

The file I downloaded to my personal laptop, and attempted to install (after copying it to a USB memory stick
and verifying the CRC SHA256) is listed as FreeBSD-15.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img 1560400384.

My expectation after reading the Handbook in advance of the installation attempt was that this img file
would have all the files on it necessary to install FreeBSD and the Ports collection so I could have a
successful, secure installation.

The installation menu popup indicated that a number of optional security and debugging packages were only
available via the Internet and provided a series of screens requesting network i.p. numbers. I abandoned the
installation at that point and reread all the documents again. I learned that the memstick image file was only
behaving as planned, and moved on to the dvd1.iso.

Since debugging and security are inherent to a good installation, not being able to install them directly did
not seem safe to me. Perhaps it's just excessive paranoia on my part when it comes to the Internet, AI and the
ability of criminal types of all kinds to worm their way into your computer if given the opportunity.

[John Levine]

It appears that John Gaskill <westcoa...@yahoo.com> said:
>My expectation after reading the Handbook in advance of the installation attempt was that this img file
>would have all the files on it necessary to install FreeBSD

Yes it does

> and the Ports collection

The ports collection is enormous and nobody uses more than a tiny fraction of
them, so no.

There's plenty on the memstick to set up FreeBSD and configure packet filters or
whatever to make a secure system. Then you put it online and install whatever
additional packages you need.

R's,
John

[David Christensen]

On 5/17/26 08:48, John Gaskill wrote:

> On Friday, May 15, 2026 at 08:06:16 PM PDT, David Christensen wrote:
>> The simple answer is to download and burn the FreeBSD installer
>> memstick image file.
>
> I tried that first, and it requires an Internet connection in order
> to conclude.
>

> I do not want to connect this box the the Internet until after it is
> completely setup, tested and secured to the degree I need it
> secured.
>
> Rufus says it can transfer the image to a memory stick,
> but I am unsure what the result might be.

AIUI you use Rufus to put one or more bootable ISO images onto a USB
stick. Then you boot the USB stick, Rufus will give you a menu of ISO
images on the USB stick, and let you pick which one to boot.

> It might be better and easier if FreeBSD created and added a
> download image of the dvd1.iso with its own unique SHA256. With the
> availabilty of inexpensive, high capacity USB memory sticks
> widespread, such an option would be easier, cheaper and more secure
> for everyone.
>
> Just a suggestion.

On 5/17/26 10:08, John Gaskill wrote:
> The file I downloaded to my personal laptop, and attempted to
> install (after copying it to a USB memory stick and verifying the
> CRC SHA256) is listed as FreeBSD-15.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img
> 1560400384.
>
> My expectation after reading the Handbook in advance of the
> installation attempt was that this img file would have all the files
> on it necessary to install FreeBSD and the Ports collection so I
> could have a successful, secure installation.
>
> The installation menu popup indicated that a number of optional
> security and debugging packages were only available via the Internet
> and provided a series of screens requesting network i.p. numbers. I
> abandoned the installation at that point and reread all the
> documents again. I learned that the memstick image file was only
> behaving as planned, and moved on to the dvd1.iso.
>
> Since debugging and security are inherent to a good installation,
> not being able to install them directly did not seem safe to me.
> Perhaps it's just excessive paranoia on my part when it comes to the
> Internet, AI and the ability of criminal types of all kinds to worm
> their way into your computer if given the opportunity.

Have you tried installing from the dvd1 ISO? Does it have everything
you want?


I wanted to suggest that, to avoid the Internet, buy installation media.
But, the links seem to be down (?):

https://freebsd.free.org/where/

Section "Purchase FreeBSD Media"


David

[Dag-Erling Smørgrav]

John Gaskill <westcoa...@yahoo.com> writes:
> My expectation after reading the Handbook in advance of the
> installation attempt was that this img file would have all the files
> on it necessary to install FreeBSD

Yes.

> and the Ports collection

They wouldn't fit. You need about 4-5 GB of packages for a full desktop
environment with a browser and an office suite, and that's just a tiny
subset of the entire collection. But the entire base system, including
debugging symbols and tests, is less than 1 GB.

> so I could have a successful, secure installation.

You can have that using the memstick image.

> The installation menu popup indicated that a number of optional
> security and debugging packages were only available via the Internet

uh, no

> and provided a series of screens requesting network i.p. numbers.

It offers to try DHCP first, so you must either have declined that or
there is something wrong with your network.

> Since debugging and security are inherent to a good installation, not
> being able to install them directly did not seem safe to me. Perhaps
> it's just excessive paranoia on my part when it comes to the Internet,
> AI and the ability of criminal types of all kinds to worm their way
> into your computer if given the opportunity.

You certainly have a vivid imagination.

[John Gaskill]

 On Sunday, May 17, 2026 at 11:36:15 PM PDT, David Christensen <dpch...@holgerdanske.com> wrote:

>On 5/17/26 10:08, John Gaskill wrote:
>> The file I downloaded to my personal laptop, and attempted to
>> install (after copying it to a USB memory stick and verifying the
>> CRC SHA256) is listed as FreeBSD-15.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img
>> 1560400384.
>>
>> My expectation after reading the Handbook in advance of the
>> installation attempt was that this img file would have all the files
>> on it necessary to install FreeBSD and the Ports collection so I
>> could have a successful, secure installation.
>>
>> The installation menu popup indicated that a number of optional
>> security and debugging packages were only available via the Internet
>> and provided a series of screens requesting network i.p. numbers. I
>> abandoned the installation at that point and reread all the
>> documents again. I learned that the memstick image file was only
>> behaving as planned, and moved on to the dvd1.iso.
>>
>> Since debugging and security are inherent to a good installation,
>> not being able to install them directly did not seem safe to me.
>> Perhaps it's just excessive paranoia on my part when it comes to the
>> Internet, AI and the ability of criminal types of all kinds to worm
>> their way into your computer if given the opportunity.

> Have you tried installing from the dvd1 ISO?  Does it have everything
> you want?

Yes, I did. Without success.

I have the dvd drive selected as the boot drive until after the installation
is complete, and it is recognized by the system.

So I contacted ASUS Support and altered the DVD hookup, and made all
the changes the support agent told me to make. I have checked the
UEFI status and everything is recognized as being there and functioning.

After exiting the UEFI to boot, I submit the ADMIN PW, get about ten
seconds of black screen, the dvd lights up and rolls, but stops, and a
different font of text message appears, stating:

"Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media
in selected Boot device and press a key"

Doing so produces a loop repeating the same message.

A cold start, and sign in bypassing the UEFI produces the same result.

IIRC the .iso type files are supposed to be self-starting in a boot use.

I am also going to take this up with ASUS support today

[David Christensen]

On 5/18/26 08:23, John Gaskill wrote:

> On Sunday, May 17, 2026 at 11:36:15 PM PDT, David Christensen wrote:
>>  Have you tried installing from the dvd1 ISO?  Does it have everything
>>  you want?
>
> Yes, I did. Without success.
>
> I have the dvd drive selected as the boot drive until after the installation
> is complete, and it is recognized by the system.
>
> So I contacted ASUS Support and altered the DVD hookup, and made all
> the changes the support agent told me to make. I have checked the
> UEFI status and everything is recognized as being there and functioning.
>
> After exiting the UEFI to boot, I submit the ADMIN PW, get about ten
> seconds of black screen, the dvd lights up and rolls, but stops, and a
> different font of text message appears, stating:
>
> "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media
> in selected Boot device and press a key"
>
> Doing so produces a loop repeating the same message.
>
> A cold start, and sign in bypassing the UEFI produces the same result.
>
> IIRC the .iso type files are supposed to be self-starting in a boot use.
>
> I am also going to take this up with ASUS support today

A bad DVD could produce those results. A bad DVD drive could produce
those results. Try computing the checksum of the FreeBSD dvd1 DVD
without mounting it and compare the computed checksum to the published
checksum of the FreeBSD dvd1 ISO. Try booting a known good bootable
DVD. Try booting the FreeBSD dvd1 DVD in a system that has a known good
DVD drive.


If you burned the FreeBSD memstick image to a USB drive, you could boot
that and it should have a rescue shell that you could use for
trouble-shooting.


David

[John Gaskill]

The DVD drive is new as is the Memorex dvd-r disc. I hooked up the drive to my
laptop and it works fine. I used 7Zip to compute the checksum and it matches
the SHA 256 published for the dvd1-iso.

I use 7zip to test the file and got the following results:

"7zip tested 99% I;\FreeBSD-15.0-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso

Total Size 4244 MB
Compresses Size 4242 MB
Processed 4242 MB
Files 30559
Errors: 1

Testing [BOOT}\
2-Boot-NoEmul.img

----------------------------- Error Report Box

1. FreeBSD-15.0-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso

Warnings:
There are some data the end of the payload data.

> If you burned the FreeBSD memstick image to a USB drive, you could boot
> that and it should have a rescue shell that you could use for
> trouble-shooting.
>
> David

Due to a short term illness, I did not contact ASUS Support yesterday but
will do so this afternoon.