Re: Did somebody boot old Sony Vaio laptop from FreeBSD memstick

[Bap]

Quoting Lev Serebryakov <l...@FreeBSD.org>:

> Hello, All.
>
> I'm trying to install FreeBSD 10-R (i386) on old Sony Vaio laptop (it is
> VGN-SZ340P, Merom generation of Core2, ~2007).
>
> It allows to select "USB Hard drive" or "USB Optical Drive" as boot device,
> but it writes "No operating system" in both cases.
>
> I've checked memstick and found, that it doesn't have MBR (it looks like
> /dev/da4a). I've added MBR, one slice, mbr bootcode, make this slice
> active, and dump memstick image to /dev/da4s1. My desktop boots from this
> memstick without problems, laptop says "No boot code".
>
> Unfortunately, this Laptop has broken CD-ROM (and it looks like by DVD-RW
> drive in desktop is disgunctional too, I've tried to do something with it 4
> years ago).
>
> Maybe, somebody has experience of booting such old Sony Vaio from FreeBSD
> memstick and here is some trick to do this?

Not sure about a Vaio, but I have many machines that will not boot
from larger memory sticks.

Creating a 1G partion on a big stick and dd-ing onto that works for
those machines.

HTH,
Bap

>
> --
> // Black Lion AKA Lev Serebryakov <l...@FreeBSD.org>
>
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[Julian H. Stacey]

Bap wrote:
> Quoting Lev Serebryakov <l...@FreeBSD.org>:
> > Hello, All.
> >
> > I'm trying to install FreeBSD 10-R (i386) on old Sony Vaio laptop (it is
> > VGN-SZ340P, Merom generation of Core2, ~2007).
> >
> > It allows to select "USB Hard drive" or "USB Optical Drive" as boot device,
> > but it writes "No operating system" in both cases.
> >
> > I've checked memstick and found, that it doesn't have MBR (it looks like
> > /dev/da4a). I've added MBR, one slice, mbr bootcode, make this slice
> > active, and dump memstick image to /dev/da4s1. My desktop boots from this
> > memstick without problems, laptop says "No boot code".
> >
> > Unfortunately, this Laptop has broken CD-ROM (and it looks like by DVD-RW
> > drive in desktop is disgunctional too, I've tried to do something with it 4
> > years ago).
> >
> > Maybe, somebody has experience of booting such old Sony Vaio from FreeBSD
> > memstick and here is some trick to do this?
>
> Not sure about a Vaio, but I have many machines that will not boot
> from larger memory sticks.
>
> Creating a 1G partion on a big stick and dd-ing onto that works for
> those machines.

Ah, glad you mentioned that,
(as I too have made large bootable FS's on USB, but only
tested on amd64 so far & had forgotten i386 limits)

Some non PCs also dont want more than 2G SDRAM,
eg SDRAM player car radio transmitter
http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/txt/renkforce-fm-16.html
it plays from 2G SDRAM with an MBR & FAT, but the manual says <= 2G.

I suppose 32 bit CPUs will freak at/above 4G = 4,294,967,296
& what with cavalier mixing on int / unsigned, above 2G may be tempring fate.

http://www.cnet.com/laptops/sony-vaio-vgn-sz340/4505-3121_7-32328541.html
Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 / 2.0 GHz

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/search.html?keyword=T7200
http://ark.intel.com/products/27255/Intel-Core2-Duo-Processor-T7200-4M-Cache-2_00-GHz-667-MHz-FSB?wapkw=t7200
Instruction Set 64-bit

Hmm, so that's not the reason Lev is hanging then.

Cheers,
Julian
--
Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultant, Munich http://berklix.com
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[Lev Serebryakov]

Hello, Bap.
You wrote 28 января 2014 г., 15:02:48:

B> Not sure about a Vaio, but I have many machines that will not boot
B> from larger memory sticks.
I have 1G memstick, no luck.

[Lev Serebryakov]

Hello, Julian.
You wrote 28 января 2014 г., 18:49:36:

JHS> I suppose 32 bit CPUs will freak at/above 4G = 4,294,967,296
JHS> & what with cavalier mixing on int / unsigned, above 2G may be tempring fate.
It boots from installed WinXP and works fine. And it is equipped with
(only, sigh) 2G of RAM.

--
// Black Lion AKA Lev Serebryakov <l...@FreeBSD.org>

_______________________________________________

[Julian H. Stacey]

For my best guess, skim down to ****

Lev Serebryakov wrote:
> Hello, Julian.
> You wrote 28 января 2014 г., 18:49:36:
>
> JHS> I suppose 32 bit CPUs will freak at/above 4G = 4,294,967,296
> JHS> & what with cavalier mixing on int / unsigned, above 2G may be tempring fate.
> It boots from installed WinXP and works fine.

Could it be you have a 32/64 bit mismatch ? Or an MD5 error.
Or a flakey USB sector ? ... but I recall you said stick is OK on another PC.

I suggest post exactly what [little] you see through the boot
procedure, then maybe someone can identify whats going wrong.

/boot/loader.conf
boot_verbose="yes"

but I suppose you'r not getting that far.

So How about '?' to boot ? see man boot.

Maybe the laptop also has a pcmcia card (for eg a cdrom) or an
ethernet pxe boot ?

Or try an older Free/Net BSD ? Even back to venerable 4.11
(umm well, maybe not that old with USB as 4.11 has no USB I recall,
but it probably supports pcmcia cd boot)
... or find a friend to loan a usb cdrom drive ...

Once you have any sort of FreeBSD on you'll know a lot more.
Or try a Linux such as maybe Knoppix & see what that shows.

A friend last year tried a USB stick I'd made with an MBR, & though
it worked for me, it didnt for him, I suspect in a similar way as for you - I think
'cos the major numbers of the usb or hard drive were off by one - one can
set that manually from keyboard at boot
man boot

(or maybe it was off by 4 ?) ...
There's also some mess between MBRs, & device naming
( eg on my sata box new names /dev/ada[01]s[1-4] versus older
/dev/ad[46]s[1-4] ) , I recently wrote new boot sectors on
a disc on a box & now have disparity on mount names, example:

/dev/ada1s1a on / (ufs, NFS exported, local)
/dev/ada0s2a on /ad4s2 (ufs, local)
/dev/ada0s2d on /ad4s2/var (ufs, local, soft-updates)
/dev/ada0s2e on /ad4s2/tmp (ufs, local, soft-updates)
/dev/ada0s2f on /ad4s2/usr (ufs, local, soft-updates)
/dev/ada0s3a on /ad4s3 (ufs, NFS exported, local)
/dev/ada0s3d on /ad4s3/var (ufs, NFS exported, local, soft-updates)
/dev/ada0s3e on /ad4s3/tmp (ufs, NFS exported, local, soft-updates)
/dev/ada0s3f on /ad4s3/usr (ufs, NFS exported, local, soft-updates)
/dev/ada0s4a on /ad4s4 (ufs, NFS exported, local, soft-updates)
/dev/ada1s1d on /var (ufs, NFS exported, local, soft-updates)
/dev/ada1s1e on /tmp (ufs, NFS exported, local, soft-updates)
/dev/ada1s1f on /usr (ufs, NFS exported, local, soft-updates)
/dev/ada1s2a on /ad6s2 (ufs, NFS exported, local)
/dev/ada1s2d on /ad6s2/var (ufs, NFS exported, local, soft-updates)
/dev/ada1s2e on /ad6s2/tmp (ufs, NFS exported, local, soft-updates)
/dev/ada1s2f on /ad6s2/usr (ufs, NFS exported, local, soft-updates)
/dev/ada1s3a on /ad6s3 (ufs, NFS exported, local)
/dev/ada1s3d on /ad6s3/var (ufs, NFS exported, local)
/dev/ada1s3e on /ad6s3/usr (ufs, NFS exported, local)
/dev/ada1s4a on /ad6s4 (ufs, NFS exported, local, soft-updates)

My new 9.2 failed to boot until I told it root was no longer (per for my 9.1)
ad6s3 but was now (for my 9.2) ada1s1

see man boot (8) for naming, eg
Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/loader

Probably the bit to fix is in your USB stick, try /boot/loader.conf
mfsroot_load="YES"
mfsroot_type="mfs_root"
mfsroot_name="/boot/mfsroot"
**** vfs.root.mountfrom="ufs:/dev/da0s1a"

Unless like my friend last year, maybe you have some internal USB
stick or some such, consuming da0, so your external usb stick may
appear as da1, as I think happened to him.

> And it is equipped with
> (only, sigh) 2G of RAM.

My 9.1 desktop has 1G, my 10 lap 3G, & my gate host 40M, you'll survive :-)

[Bob K]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 08:42:39PM +0400, Lev Serebryakov wrote:
> Hello, Warren.

> You wrote 28 ???????????? 2014 ??., 20:32:35:
>
> >> I'm trying to install FreeBSD 10-R (i386) on old Sony Vaio laptop (it is
> >> VGN-SZ340P, Merom generation of Core2, ~2007).
> >>
> >> It allows to select "USB Hard drive" or "USB Optical Drive" as boot device,
> >> but it writes "No operating system" in both cases.

[...]
> I tried this too... It looks like this old Laptop / BIOS wants to see
> special USB Floppy / USB Optical drive device, not generic "umass" one.

Hi Lev,

According to
http://community.sony.com/t5/VAIO-Upgrade-Backup-Recovery/VAIO-VGN-NR110E-how-to-boot-from-a-USB-stick/td-p/65819
there may be settings in your BIOS that look like Advanced -> External
Drive Boot. Maybe that's the issue?

Regards,
-Bob

--
Bob <mel...@yip.org> | It's pretty good, if you don't think about it.