iMac7,1: Cannot boot: "cannot open /boot/lua/loader.lua"

[Slater91]

Describe the bug
I've tried booting helloSystem's installer on a Mid-2007 iMac. It does not boot, saying it can't find /boot/lua/loader.lua (which is, however, present on the USB key I'm using).
I have tried booting with Ventoy, without sucess ("Not a secure boot platform 14"). I have then tried booting helloSystem directly, using both GPT and MBR partition tables, without success either.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Create a bootable USB key with helloSystem 0.7.0
2. Try to boot it on a 2007 iMac

Expected behavior
The system boots.

Screenshots

Version (please complete the following information):

• Live ISO or installed system to disk: Live
• FreeBSD version (System --> About this Computer): 13?
• helloSystem build (cat /.url): 0.7.0 (0G160)
• Running in a virtual machine: no

Computer (please complete the following information):

• Device: iMac Mid-2007 (Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, more info here)

[probonopd]

Indeed Ventoy seems to have issues with Macs, I ran into this too.

What surprises me is that you hare getting this when using a bootable USB key with helloSystem 0.7.0.

As I have seen issues with defective USB flash drives myself, could you retry with another USB key?

[Slater91]

To be on the safe side, I tried the following:

• three different USB keys
• those USB keys with helloSystem 0.6.0
• a USB hard disk, new and known to be working
  In all three cases, the system wouldn't boot.

Let me know if I can provide any additional information. Thanks!

[probonopd]

For the search engines:
ERROR: cannot open /boot/lua/loader.lua: invalid argument.

Whoever knows the root cause or solution to this, please comment here. Thanks!

[probonopd]

@Slater91 what happens when you enter

unset boot_mute
boot

and press Enter?

[Slater91]

So, I managed to get beyond that stage through a bit of additional trial and error. I am used to create USB keys for Linux from Linux, where I just do dd if=file.img of=/dev/sda1. That doesn't work with FreeBSD images, it seems, as I had to use dd if=file.img of=/dev/sda. Once I had done that, the boot process actually started as expected.
The problem is that then it stopped when it reached this stage:

(sorry for the potato quality, my phone is not great)
With the USB keys it just reboots immediately, with the USB HDD it arrives at that point and then just hangs there - I've left it there for more than one hour without results. As a newcomer to both FreeBSD and Macs, I really have no idea what is going on.

I've done some research and according to this bug report the issue should be fixed in FreeBSD 13, but it seems like it's not - at least not the version used by helloSystem. I will conduct further testing tomorrow with "pure" FreeBSD to see if things work there.

[Slater91]

I've done some further testing with FreeBSD. It turns out that the 13.0-RELEASE branch (this IMG) has the same issue as helloSystem - i.e. it hangs on boot. The 13.0-STABLE branch (this IMG) does not work, either. I will probably open a bug report upstream.

[probonopd]

In case you do, please link it here. Thanks!

[probonopd]

@tsoome can you point us to a FreeBSD ISO which has the latest bootloader so we can retest it there?

[tsoome]

@tsoome can you point us to a FreeBSD ISO which has the latest bootloader so we can retest it there?

either current or 13 stable - latest version. I'd use latest current. if confirmed good, then we do know it is fixed and next step would be to check which 13 is good (if any).