NetBSD install on a Lenovo ThinkPad T440

At the time of this writting, I have used the NetBSD 7.0 amd64 USB image (can be downloaded here).

This is an install image that you can write to a USB stick. It is already bootable and has a small MBR.

It was necessary to deal a one time modification to allow the NetBSD USB image boot up. There are two modifications made in BIOS and one just before installing.

BIOS changes

Enable Legacy BIOS boot (so we do not need to boot from UEFI)

The NetBSD USB image available on the NetBSD website is a traditional MBR image. Because of that, we need to enable UEFI booting. This is done in BIOS, following the path:

Startup

UEFI/Legacy Boot -> change to "Both"

UEFI/Legacy Boot Priority -> "Legacy First"

Disable USB 3 support

NetBSD doesn't support USB 3 yet. Since we are booting from a USB device when installing it (this host doesn't have a CD drive) it is necessary to make this modification very early. To do that, follow this path in the BIOS:

Config

USB UEFI BIOS Support -> make sure it is "Enabled"

USB 3.0 Mode -> change to "Disabled"

If you don't do this, you may run into an error when booting the image. You may be queried for the filesystem type to use. If it happened to you, you probably didn't turn off USB 3:

boot device: <unknown>
root device:
dump device...
file system (default generic):

Post-BIOS (but pre-install) changes

Drop GPT out

By default, the host came with the new GPT thing. It is possible to make NetBSD work with it but I prefered to switch back to the old and good MBR. If you prefer to make that, just after dropping to sysinst, pause it (with Ctrl-Z) and delete the GPT with the following commands:

# gpt destroy wd0
# gpt destroy wd1