From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Mar 27 22:40:01 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A64841065675 for ; Sat, 27 Mar 2010 22:40:01 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from ari@ish.com.au) Received: from fish.ish.com.au (eth5921.nsw.adsl.internode.on.net [59.167.240.32]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 358648FC20 for ; Sat, 27 Mar 2010 22:40:00 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [10.29.62.2] (port=52921 helo=Aris-MacBook-Pro.local) by fish.ish.com.au with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1NveUo-0004eS-0t for freebsd-fs@freebsd.org; Sun, 28 Mar 2010 09:28:46 +1100 Message-ID: <4BAE869C.6070601@ish.com.au> Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2010 09:28:44 +1100 From: Aristedes Maniatis User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100227 Lightning/1.0b1 Thunderbird/3.0.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: boot code compatibility with ZFS X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2010 22:40:01 -0000 FreeBSD has recently been able to boot directly from ZFS as deailed here: http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS Naturally having functional boot code has been key to this, but it is very confusing as to why sometimes I can get FreeBSD to boot nicely and sometimes not. From comments in threads and my experience, I've got the following rough timeline: FreeBSD 7.1: ZFS version 6, no ZFS boot capability FreeBSD 7.2: ZFS version 6, zfsboot only, boot from single vdev pool only FreeBSD 7.3: ZFS version 13, zfsboot broken, no ZFS boot capability FreeBSD 8.0: ZFS version 13, gptzfsboot and zfsboot, boot from mirrored pool or single vdev, RAIDZ not supported, degraded pool not supported My questions: 1. Is the above list correct? 2. What is the situation for the two stable branches? 3. In an effort to get a machine booting properly I tried installing the boot code from 8-STABLE with a 8.0 kernel. That didn't work. What is the situation with backward and forward compatibility of the boot code? Will there come a time when an OS update will require an update of the boot code? If someone were able to put these answers on the wiki page as well, I believe this would help others. Thanks Ari Maniatis -- --------------------------> Aristedes Maniatis ish http://www.ish.com.au Level 1, 30 Wilson Street Newtown 2042 Australia phone +61 2 9550 5001 fax +61 2 9550 4001 GPG fingerprint CBFB 84B4 738D 4E87 5E5C 5EFA EF6A 7D2E 3E49 102A -- --------------------------> Aristedes Maniatis ish http://www.ish.com.au Level 1, 30 Wilson Street Newtown 2042 Australia phone +61 2 9550 5001 fax +61 2 9550 4001 GPG fingerprint CBFB 84B4 738D 4E87 5E5C 5EFA EF6A 7D2E 3E49 102A