Minnowboard:MinnowMaxBSD-Distros

The general process of setting up BSD for the MinnowBoard MAX is quite similar to setting up Linux on any other computer:
 * 1) Make a bootable installer for your distro of choice
 * 2) Plug in the storage volume you want to install to (i.e. a larger SATA or USB HDD, MicroSD card, etc.,)
 * 3) Install to that drive

However, there are a few things to keep in mind:


 * MicroSD cards:
 * When installing to a MicroSD card, be aware that these cards are frequently quite slow and may result in poor performance if you install an operating system to them.
 * SD Cards (as do all flash) have a limited number of writes, take care when using flash memory, particularly for SWAP as they can incur a lot of writes in a short period of time, ultimately leading to flash failure
 * USB Sticks:
 * SD Cards (as do all flash) have a limited number of writes, take care when using flash memory, particularly for SWAP as they can incur a lot of writes in a short period of time, ultimately leading to flash failure
 * Installing TO USB storage as well as installing FROM storage may cause issues, and you may have to wait for your installer to fully boot before plugging in the USB stick you intend to install to.

The MinnowBoard MAX ships with a 64-bit UEFI Firmware. UEFI can only work when the OS and Firmware are matched on what the architecture is. This means a 32-bit OS cannot be run from a 64-bit Firmware, and vice versa.

The ONLY available FreeBSD UEFI Loader supports 64-bit Operating Systems and 64-bit UEFI Firmware. There is no 32-bit FreeBSD UEFI Loader:

Support matrix of firmware and OS:

Running in an unsupported configuration may not even boot, but at the least will lead to very odd system interactions. Having a single firmware with UEFI that supports both is not possible.

A detailed explanation of this can be found On the MAX Bios page - 32-bit vs 64-bit UEFI section

= FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE" 64-bit =

To create a bootable USB installer drive for Linux Mint, you can use the Universal USB Installer from pendrivelinux.com. A "direct write" method may work as well, but this is as yet untested.

Booting from the FreeBSD installer flash drive
Once you get to the EFI shell, the following command will boot the installer:

If you're installing Mint to a USB flash drive or USB HDD
You should wait to plug in your installation target drive until after the FreeBSD installer has finished booting. This way you will surely know which device you are installing to, ie da0 or da1, etc.

Install Process
This will be very similar to a normal FreeBSD install process. Just be sure to select the correct storage volumet to install to. Select the options to wipe whatever's on that volume already and repartition it automatically. The installer will create a small FAT EFI partition, a large UFS root partition, and then a small swap partition. This is all fine.

If you're installing Mint to a USB flash drive or USB HDD
The GRUB configuration is going to need some adjustments to make your target disk boot without the installer disk present.

After finishing the installer, shut down the MinnowMax, and start it back up again with only the target disk plugged in. You will need to get to the bootloader menu and hit "e" to edit the first entry. Change all mentions of  to   and all mentions of   to. Then hit F10 to boot your Linux Mint installation for the first time. If you get an EFI shell, see for instructions on getting to a bootloader menu.

Once you've finished booting and have logged in, launch a terminal and run the following command to regenerate your GRUB configuration: You will no longer have to manually edit the bootloader entry every time you boot Linux Mint. Be sure no bootable storage volumes besides your Mint installation are plugged in when you do this.

Final Steps
It is highly recommended that you upgrade to a new kernel (3.14 or newer) after your installation is complete. This fixes a number of things, including HDMI sound output (this has been tested and confirmed to work after the kernel update.) You may have to compile it yourself. Find Linux Mint's standard kernel configuration under /boot, copy it to .config in your Linux 3.14 source tree, run "make oldconfig" to update the configuration to match the newer kernel, and then compile the kernel as normal. If you have another Linux computer with which to do the actual compilation of the kernel, that would likely be faster than compiling it on the Minowboard MAX. Then you can copy the kernel source tree over to your Max and run the installation part. (TODO: find a PPA or something with newer kernels in it so people don't have to compile them.)

NOTE: the linux-yocto 3.14 tree was used for this test, it may contain sound-related fixes that won't hit mainline Linux until 3.15.

If you're installing Mint to a USB flash drive or USB HDD
The Linux Mint installer does not seem to automatically change the boot order setup of the MinnowBoard MAX, so you may get an EFI shell when you boot. To get to the Linux Mint bootloader, you may have to run the following EFI commands at boot time:

If you want to adjust your boot order manually, you can run the following EFI command: This will drop you to a legacy BIOS configuration screen where you can do a number of things, including tweak your boot order. Once this is done, the EFI commands listed above should be unnecessary. (TODO: write up what actual steps are involved.)