Solved FreeBSD Installer Only Visible on 1/8th of the Screen

T

Toad39

Hello,
I am trying to install FreeBSD for the first time. I burned this ISO from the FreeBSD ftp and burned it using Windows Disk Image Burner to my Windows computer's DVD drive. I then booted it onto my Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon (1st Gen) using a Dell external DVD drive. I reach the bootloader successfully, and I can start it. However, after that, the installation window only takes up roughly 1/8th of the screen, while the bootloader takes up the other 7/8. I believe something is wrong with the resolution. Is there a way to change the resolution, or is there some other step to get the installer to take up the whole screen?
 
  • Be very insistent with the UEFI/BIOS settings of your laptop. Consult the Install READMEs & handbook on this.
  • Try using an USB stick instead of DVD.
  • When the boot menu is shown (partly), press "3" to go to the boot console, then type "mode 3" and "boot"
 
So it turns out that booting in BIOS mode (legacy) solved the problem, which makes me wonder why UEFI didn't work. I will try the other option later, and edit this post after I did it.

Edit: Doing the 3rd option did clear the screen, but the log was still in the top 1/8th or so. Maybe it is the 'quirk' that mjollnir mentioned below.
 
Toad39 said:
So it turns out that booting in BIOS mode (legacy) solved the problem, which makes me wonder why UEFI didn't work. I will try the other option later, and edit this post after I did it.
Click to expand...
UEFI boot (w/ and w/o CSM) should work. But the installer selects different 1st and 2nd stage (man efi(8) & boot(8)) based on what was active when it was started. So if you booted via BIOS or CSM, installed FreeBSD, and changed to UEFI after the installer was run, it can not succeed.

On your initial issue, I remember that I had a similar problem with a slightly non-conforming CD/DVD drive some years ago. These devices can have so-called quirks hard-coded in the kernel. E.g. the model assembled from 2005-2007 (Aug) is fine, then 3 month of bad revisions, then after 2007 (Nov) they are fine again. Such things happen, we have to live with it.
 
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