Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2016 11:34:01 -0600 From: Eric van Gyzen <vangyzen@FreeBSD.org> To: =?UTF-8?Q?Fernando_Herrero_Carr=c3=b3n?= <elferdo@gmail.com>, freebsd-stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI) Message-ID: <71c128ef-8ad0-3cd8-9c34-8fc349d61447@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <CAMwkeZznenmN1RkUaKZ7i12F0FA185ZH%2BcHPXUp56S8j3SrubQ@mail.gmail.com> References: <CAMwkeZznenmN1RkUaKZ7i12F0FA185ZH%2BcHPXUp56S8j3SrubQ@mail.gmail.com>
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On 12/16/2016 11:08, Fernando Herrero Carrón wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> A few months ago I got myself a new box and I have been happily running
> FreeBSD on it ever since. I noticed that the boot was not as fast as I had
> expected and I've realized that, while my disk is GPT partitioned, the boot
> process is still BIOS based:
>
> % gpart show
> => 34 976773101 ada0 GPT (466G)
> 34 6 - free - (3.0K)
> 40 1024 1 freebsd-boot (512K)
> 1064 984 - free - (492K)
> 2048 67108864 2 freebsd-swap (32G)
> 67110912 909662208 3 freebsd-zfs (434G)
> 976773120 15 - free - (7.5K)
>
> I am reading uefi(8) and it looks like FreeBSD 11 should be able to boot
> using UEFI straight into ZFS, so I am thinking of converting that
> freebsd-boot partition to an EFI partition, creating a FAT filesystem and
> copying /boot/boot.efi there.
>
> How good of an idea is that? Would it really be that simple or am I missing
> something? My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot,
> everything is working fine otherwise.
I would recommend creating another partition for EFI instead of replacing your
freebsd-boot partition, in order to have a working fallback in case EFI boot
doesn't work. You would need to steal some space from your swap partition.
Otherwise, it's a good idea, and it really is that simple. I did exactly that
when I updated a machine to 11 and switched to EFI.
$ gpart show ada0
=> 34 500118125 ada0 GPT (238G)
34 6 - free - (3.0K)
40 1024 1 freebsd-boot (512K)
1064 1600 2 efi (800K)
2664 10485144 4 freebsd-swap (5.0G)
10487808 489629696 3 freebsd-zfs (233G)
500117504 655 - free - (328K)
$ sysctl machdep.bootmethod
machdep.bootmethod: UEFI
Eric
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