Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2015 22:38:47 +0200 From: Niklaas Baudet von Gersdorff <niklaas@kulturflatrate.net> To: Bigby James <bigby.james@dimthoughts.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Lenovo T420 installlation with zfsroot and GPT/UEFI (FreeBSD 10.1) Message-ID: <20150422203847.GJ2378@len-x61s.klaas> In-Reply-To: <20150422131047.GA1955@WorkBox.Home> References: <20150422070144.GS2378@len-x61s.klaas> <20150422131047.GA1955@WorkBox.Home>
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Bigby James [2015-04-22 08:10 -0500] :
> First off, as of 10.1-RELEASE FreeBSD cannot boot from a ZFS root
> partition via UEFI. It's simply not possible right now.
I assume this is what the warning message is about, isn't it?
> Second, my T520 will only boot FreeBSD from a GPT disk via UEFI, and
> the T420 likely has the same firmware. So you can format an MBR disk
> with ZFS and boot via legacy mode, but ZFS can't boot from GPT with
> UEFI.
Which would be realised by setting "Partition Scheme" from "GPT" to
"MBR" in the installation guide for a ZFS setup, wouldn't it? If I do so
and change the boot mode to "legacy" I only get a blank screen with the
cursor blinking in the top left.
What I did then was dd-ing the non-uefi memstick on a flash disk,
ensuring that "legacy" is the active boot mode, and booting from the
flash disk. I went through the installation, choosing the guided ZFS
install again. There I set "MBR" as partition type (to make sure that
everything is "old-style") and performed the installation. After that I
rebooted and what happens now is that the system tries to boot, shows a
blank screen, tries to boot again, shows a blank screen again, and so
on.
> Or you can do what I did, and create a 1.5G partition for the root
> ('/') filesystem, format it to UFS, and leave the rest of the disk for
> ZFS.
Thanks for pointing out that option. I'd like to keep the partition
scheme as simple as possible -- if it can be simple.
Thanks for your help,
--
Niklaas
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