Installing FreeBSD 13 on a mac mini 2,1
Mac mini 2,1 devices are tricky, they are 64bit, but have a 32bit EFI. booting a usb to install Freebsd isn't going to work.
my internal cdrom drive is faulty, so can't use that
an external cdrom won't install either.
The easiest way to install it, is to boot the mac mini into target disk mode (hold T on boot). Then connect a fireware cable to another system. The internal disk in the mini will now show up as a disk on this other system.
install virtualbox and setup raw disk access to the firewire drive. install freebsd in virtualbox, which is therefore writing at a raw level to the disk in the mini. complete the install, power cycle the mini and it should boot into freebsd.
everything worked for me, graphics were a problem though with freebsd, it wouldn't detect the DVI. digging around, this fixed it
installing port graphics/drm-fbsd12.0-kmod and adding
my internal cdrom drive is faulty, so can't use that
an external cdrom won't install either.
The easiest way to install it, is to boot the mac mini into target disk mode (hold T on boot). Then connect a fireware cable to another system. The internal disk in the mini will now show up as a disk on this other system.
install virtualbox and setup raw disk access to the firewire drive. install freebsd in virtualbox, which is therefore writing at a raw level to the disk in the mini. complete the install, power cycle the mini and it should boot into freebsd.
everything worked for me, graphics were a problem though with freebsd, it wouldn't detect the DVI. digging around, this fixed it
installing port graphics/drm-fbsd12.0-kmod and adding
kld_list="/boot/modules/drm.ko /boot/modules/i915kms.ko"
to the top of rc.conf,
Comments