From owner-freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Fri Dec 16 17:34:03 2016 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 281CFC81FC5 for ; Fri, 16 Dec 2016 17:34:03 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from vangyzen@FreeBSD.org) Received: from smtp.vangyzen.net (hotblack.vangyzen.net [199.48.133.146]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0C0EB1EAF for ; Fri, 16 Dec 2016 17:34:02 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from vangyzen@FreeBSD.org) Received: from ford.home.vangyzen.net (unknown [76.164.15.242]) by smtp.vangyzen.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id B32B15647F; Fri, 16 Dec 2016 11:34:01 -0600 (CST) Subject: Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI) To: =?UTF-8?Q?Fernando_Herrero_Carr=c3=b3n?= , freebsd-stable References: From: Eric van Gyzen Message-ID: <71c128ef-8ad0-3cd8-9c34-8fc349d61447@FreeBSD.org> Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2016 11:34:01 -0600 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.4.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2016 17:34:03 -0000 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