From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Dec 22 11:48:11 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8C7C1106568F for ; Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:48:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from des@des.no) Received: from smtp.des.no (smtp.des.no [194.63.250.102]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C9098FC24 for ; Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:48:11 +0000 (UTC) Received: from ds4.des.no (des.no [84.49.246.2]) by smtp.des.no (Postfix) with ESMTP id 549241FFC22; Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:48:10 +0000 (UTC) Received: by ds4.des.no (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 33F4C84531; Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:48:10 +0100 (CET) From: =?utf-8?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=C3=B8rgrav?= To: "James R. Van Artsdalen" References: <200912210600.46044.mel.flynn+fbsd.current@mailing.thruhere.net> <20091221150514.GB75616@roberto-al.eurocontrol.fr> <4B2F9877.70201@jrv.org> Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:48:10 +0100 In-Reply-To: <4B2F9877.70201@jrv.org> (James R. Van Artsdalen's message of "Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:47:03 -0600") Message-ID: <867hsf6xhh.fsf@ds4.des.no> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.95 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Cc: Ollivier Robert , freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some notes on RootOnZFS article in wiki X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:48:11 -0000 "James R. Van Artsdalen" writes: > Ollivier Robert writes: > > On modern machines, system will boot from the GPT "freebsd-boot" > > partition w/o having it active > A correctly-written PC BIOS does not even look at (or for) a partition > table of any sort when booting. That's been the case for a > quarter-century. A system that does not boot without the active bit > set is buggy, not new vs. old. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Some MBRs look for the active bit, some don't. It doesn't mean they're buggy; it's a design decision. FWIW, ours does. Some BIOSes *do* read the partition table; there was an issue some years ago with ThinkPads that froze at boot if you installed FreeBSD on them because they misidentified the FreeBSD partition as a suspend-to-disk partition. DES --=20 Dag-Erling Sm=C3=B8rgrav - des@des.no