From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu May 9 11:39:16 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [8.8.178.115]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E5FC34A7 for ; Thu, 9 May 2013 11:39:16 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: from tux-cave.hellug.gr (tux-cave.hellug.gr [195.134.99.74]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6FD83FC for ; Thu, 9 May 2013 11:39:15 +0000 (UTC) X-Spam-Status: No X-Hellug-MailScanner-From: keramida@ceid.upatras.gr X-Hellug-MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam, SpamAssassin (not cached, score=-2.9, required 5, autolearn=not spam, ALL_TRUSTED -1.00, BAYES_00 -1.90) X-Hellug-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-Hellug-MailScanner-ID: r49Bcu2C030509 Received: from giorgos.local.local (217-162-217-29.dynamic.hispeed.ch [217.162.217.29]) (authenticated bits=0) by tux-cave.hellug.gr (8.14.3/8.14.3/Debian-9.4) with ESMTP id r49Bcu2C030509 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES128-SHA bits=128 verify=NOT); Thu, 9 May 2013 14:39:04 +0300 From: keramida@ceid.upatras.gr (Giorgos Keramidas) To: Joshua Isom Subject: Re: ZFS on MBR does not boot at all References: <67um8rwqrdrxes.fsf@saturn.laptop> <5186E3B1.80207@gmail.com> Date: Thu, 09 May 2013 13:38:40 +0200 In-Reply-To: <5186E3B1.80207@gmail.com> (Joshua Isom's message of "Sun, 05 May 2013 17:56:49 -0500") Message-ID: <67um8rk3n88jsv.fsf@saturn.laptop> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (darwin) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 09 May 2013 11:39:17 -0000 On Sun, 05 May 2013 17:56:49 -0500, Joshua Isom wrote: > On 5/5/2013 3:20 PM, Giorgos Keramidas wrote: >> Hi David, >> >> Thanks for following up with what the real problem was. I updated the >> Wiki to include this: >> >> Note that partition order is important. It seems that zfsboot >> requires the freebsd-zfs partition to be the first, so make sure you >> add if first, before your swap partition. >> >> Cheers, >> Giorgos > > What? I've been using this set up for years. > > => 34 976773101 ada1 GPT (465G) > 34 128 1 freebsd-boot (64k) > 162 8388608 2 freebsd-swap (4.0G) > 8388770 968384365 3 freebsd-zfs (461G) > > => 34 976773101 ada2 GPT (465G) > 34 128 1 freebsd-boot (64k) > 162 8388608 2 freebsd-swap (4.0G) > 8388770 968384365 3 freebsd-zfs (461G) That's ok for GPT partitions. The original post was about an MBR partition table. Some modern laptops (mine is one) do not boot successfully from a disk with a GPT partition scheme, unless the boot loader is EFI-capable (which ours isn't). So you have to use an MBR-style partition table. In those cases the note is still useful to see.