Solved 14.1 Release installer stuck

Hey! Let me give you a little background.

I'm a Linux user. Not a very good Linux user. I prefer to point and click. I prefer to not deal with things and have my OS "just work". That doesn't mean I don't get dirty with lower level stuff, it's just that I'm not really experienced.

However I've been wanting to learn a new (and hopefully simpler, more to the point) operative system. I want to feel excited again about using a computer (I'm a former software developer and current software architect and manager at the end of the day). And FreeBSD have been on my mind for a long time.

Ok so I bought a very low power, very low quality mini PC. I'm using the pendrive image.

Booting the installer results in getting stuck at the following:
20240912_164959.jpg

I have tried several boot options. Right now I have disabled everything except Verbose, however I'm not really receiving any more information.

Hey, please help me. Any kind of help works, even help pointing me on how to debug or find the cause. I want to learn FreeBSD, I don't want to settle for anything less.
 
I'd try disabling various things in BIOS.

The one time I had a similar scenario where FreeBSD froze at boot like that, I was messing with some hw.pci settings. One idea is to disable any instances of IOMMU and CPU virtualization settings.

Probably not an issue, but I'd disable the card reader if you aren't using it, along with anything else not immediately-needed to install FreeBSD (only really need a keyboard and display :p)
 
I'd try disabling various things in BIOS.

The one time I had a similar scenario where FreeBSD froze at boot like that, I was messing with some hw.pci settings. One idea is to disable any instances of IOMMU and CPU virtualization settings.

Probably not an issue, but I'd disable the card reader if you aren't using it, along with anything else not immediately-needed to install FreeBSD (only really need a keyboard and display :p)
Alright! Will do and report any findings! Thanks a lot for replying, it is very encouraging!
 
FreeBSD-current isn't officially supported here but testing older and newer versions than 14.1 may also help at least for testing 'if' something works. You can also try options from the boot menu that should have appeared before that to get more verbose booting and enable/disable a few things. Listing what hardware you are running it on would also be useful. What accessories are connected and do you have anything you can try removing just to get it to boot beyond what can be disabled in bios? When things get really weird, remember that often only a minimum is needed for most computers to boot: power, maybe video, maybe temporarily (remove after getting through POST) a keyboard. In addition to trying to boot Linux or Windows installers, you can also try memtest86 or other tools to look for any obvious problems.
 
There are no "newer versions" of 14.1. Once 14.1 is installed freebsd-update will patch it with security and errata patches. There's a slight chance that 14.2 might include support but that depends on how dramatic a change that would be to the 14/stable.

What kind of machine is it? How new is it. Newer hardware is only supported on 15-CURRENT. We don't merge new hardware and features from -CURRENT into -STABLE/-RELEASE as new features risk breakage.

Go to ftp.freebsd.org (browsers don't support the FTP protocol anymore) and navigate to /pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/ISO-IMAGES/15.0. This should give us a better idea if support for your hardware is in the pipeline.

But, looking at your console output it appears to be hung locating or initializing a device. At that point of the boot it's initializing keyboard and disk controllers, ACPI thermal zones and PS/2 mouse (attached to the keyboard controller).

Also, if your BIOS has an ATA or IDE mode, switch to the other mode. This assumes ATA controller.
 
There are no "newer versions" of 14.1. Once 14.1 is installed freebsd-update will patch it with security and errata patches. There's a slight chance that 14.2 might include support but that depends on how dramatic a change that would be to the 14/stable.

What kind of machine is it? How new is it. Newer hardware is only supported on 15-CURRENT. We don't merge new hardware and features from -CURRENT into -STABLE/-RELEASE as new features risk breakage.

Go to ftp.freebsd.org (browsers don't support the FTP protocol anymore) and navigate to /pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/ISO-IMAGES/15.0. This should give us a better idea if support for your hardware is in the pipeline.

But, looking at your console output it appears to be hung locating or initializing a device. At that point of the boot it's initializing keyboard and disk controllers, ACPI thermal zones and PS/2 mouse (attached to the keyboard controller).

Also, if your BIOS has an ATA or IDE mode, switch to the other mode. This assumes ATA controller.
No new hardware. It's an Intel atom x5-Z8350. This computer sucks so much that there is not even a way to configure (or see) if there is ATA or IDE.

I was playing around with boot options in the live pendrive image and was able to get to the following:

20240915_170609.jpg
 
FreeBSD-current isn't officially supported here but testing older and newer versions than 14.1 may also help at least for testing 'if' something works. You can also try options from the boot menu that should have appeared before that to get more verbose booting and enable/disable a few things. Listing what hardware you are running it on would also be useful. What accessories are connected and do you have anything you can try removing just to get it to boot beyond what can be disabled in bios? When things get really weird, remember that often only a minimum is needed for most computers to boot: power, maybe video, maybe temporarily (remove after getting through POST) a keyboard. In addition to trying to boot Linux or Windows installers, you can also try memtest86 or other tools to look for any obvious problems.
This is definitely not very new, is a discontinued atom x5-Z8350. Will try to use 15. Thank you
 
Not this one?

 
Not this one?

Not really. It doesn't even have a dedicated product page :)
 
FreeBSD-current isn't officially supported here but testing older and newer versions than 14.1 may also help at least for testing 'if' something works. You can also try options from the boot menu that should have appeared before that to get more verbose booting and enable/disable a few things. Listing what hardware you are running it on would also be useful. What accessories are connected and do you have anything you can try removing just to get it to boot beyond what can be disabled in bios? When things get really weird, remember that often only a minimum is needed for most computers to boot: power, maybe video, maybe temporarily (remove after getting through POST) a keyboard. In addition to trying to boot Linux or Windows installers, you can also try memtest86 or other tools to look for any obvious problems.
After using the image for 15 current, installation finally worked! Thanks a bunch everyone. How can I mark the thread as solved?
 
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