From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Mar 24 11:58:02 2015 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher AECDH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 34D1951C for ; Tue, 24 Mar 2015 11:58:02 +0000 (UTC) Received: from bede.qeng-ho.org (bede.qeng-ho.org [217.155.128.241]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 6000CC0A for ; Tue, 24 Mar 2015 11:58:00 +0000 (UTC) Received: from arthur.home.qeng-ho.org (arthur.home.qeng-ho.org [172.23.1.2]) by bede.home.qeng-ho.org (8.14.9/8.14.7) with ESMTP id t2OBt9Ua014158; Tue, 24 Mar 2015 11:55:10 GMT (envelope-from freebsd@qeng-ho.org) Message-ID: <5511509D.6070708@qeng-ho.org> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 11:55:09 +0000 From: Arthur Chance User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.5.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jason Birch , "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" Subject: Re: Fwd: Possible (or smart) to put freebsd-boot on USB stick for root-on-ZFS? References: <20150324092914.ed0ebb7f.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 11:58:02 -0000 On 24/03/2015 09:08, Jason Birch wrote: > On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 7:56 PM, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk > wrote: >> On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 1:29 AM, Polytropon wrote: >>> On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 00:49:46 -0700, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk wrote: > > While I appreciate the discussion this has generated, it's not quite > related to the questions I had around the freebsd-boot partition alone > being on some removable media, and I'd like to try and steer the > discussion back in that direction for my benefit (obviously ;)) and > for the benefit of anyone trawling the lists looking for a similar > answer. > > For the record, this will be for a reasonably large ZFS file server, > and so having things like the home directories live on the larger ZFS > volume (and not the mirrored SSDs) is something I'll probably be > doing. However, it's more about the partitioning and device > arrangement once the machine has booted, and that's not quite what I'm > having difficulties understanding. > > I will, of course, be trying these things out myself on the weekend. > But I'm also hoping for some experiences from those who have tried, or > who know the innards of freebsd-boot enough to know without trying, > such a set up. Sounds like you might want to take a look at the FreeNAS web site, as that's the sort of thing it does. I've not used it myself, but when configuring a new file server I picked up various ideas from the forums there, and one thing I noted in passing was that FreeNAS is often run from a memory stick, leaving the main disks entirely free for data pools. I.e. both the boot partition and / are on the memstick. You don't need all of the root partition to boot the kernel, just /boot, but I don't know whether the gpt*boot programs require /boot to be on the same drive as they are on. I suspect it's highly likely as the boot programs are usually fairly simple. This would mean you'd need two partitions on the memstick, for the boot code and /boot, and suitable entries in /boot/loader.conf > Thanks, and sorry for being a downer, Quite understandable. Discussions here are often enlightening, or at least amusing, to the general reader, but if you want a specific question answered they can be infuriating. BT,DT. -- Those who do not learn from computing history are doomed to GOTO 1