From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Mar 10 16:53:03 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DFD15F32 for ; Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:53:03 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from cr@caltel.com) Received: from mail1.caltel.com (mail1.caltel.com [66.102.144.6]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C92D472B for ; Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:53:03 +0000 (UTC) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Ap8EABi6PFFCZpCq/2dsb2JhbABDxECBYHSCJgEBBAE4QBELGAkWDwkDAgECAUUTCAEBiAkGu0uPFRaDKgOIco1jhWeLDoMqHA X-IPAS-Result: Ap8EABi6PFFCZpCq/2dsb2JhbABDxECBYHSCJgEBBAE4QBELGAkWDwkDAgECAUUTCAEBiAkGu0uPFRaDKgOIco1jhWeLDoMqHA X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.84,819,1355126400"; d="scan'208";a="16937576" Received: from host-170.a66-102-144.caltel.com (HELO codys-mac.local) ([66.102.144.170]) by smtp.caltel.com with ESMTP/TLS/DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA; 10 Mar 2013 09:53:03 -0700 Message-ID: <513CBA6E.1090808@caltel.com> Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 09:53:02 -0700 From: Cody Ritts Organization: CalTel User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130216 Thunderbird/17.0.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Aligning MBR for ZFS boot help References: <513C1629.50501@caltel.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:53:03 -0000 Offsetting the zfs slice, was one of the the first things I tried, but when I boot the loader tells me: > zfsboot: No ZFS Pools located, can't boot I get the feeling that these need to be next to each other dd if=/boot/zfsboot of=/dev/ada0s1 count=1 dd if=/boot/zfsboot of=/dev/ada0s1a skip=1 seek=1024 Good idea on using another fdisk. I will fire up Arch and give it a go. That will also let me test if the system will not boot with any GPT, or of there is something specific to FreeBSDs. Once I isolate it, I see if I can figure out how to make a bug report to Foxconn. And putting things in perspective, 63M out of 65536M is really nbd. I wish I would have thought of that, so simple. I guess my head is still stuck in 1996 when drives were still measured in MB :) Thanks, Cody On 3/10/13 9:22 AM, Warren Block wrote: > On Sat, 9 Mar 2013, Cody Ritts wrote: > >> Poking around on the internet, it looks like gpart is possibly >> enforcing geometry boundaries? > > Not gpart, but the kernel. At present, I don't know of any way to use > FreeBSD for creating MBR slices aligned to anything other than 63 > blocks. FreeBSD partitions can be aligned inside a slice with an > offset. Putting ZFS on one of those partitions may be the easiest way > to do this. Put the slice at block 2016, then align the first FreeBSD > partition inside that slice to 1M and it should land at block 2048. > > Another option is to create the MBR with aligned slices using another > operating system, one that allows deviation from the MBR standard. > Ronald Guilmette recently showed an interesting approach of starting the > slice at 63M, the least common multiple of 63 and 1M. > > If the BIOS does not like GPT, check for BIOS updates. And make sure > the vendor knows about the problem. >