From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 27 17:18:07 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1132D106566C; Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:18:07 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from avg@icyb.net.ua) Received: from citadel.icyb.net.ua (citadel.icyb.net.ua [212.40.38.140]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 212478FC17; Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:18:05 +0000 (UTC) Received: from odyssey.starpoint.kiev.ua (alpha-e.starpoint.kiev.ua [212.40.38.101]) by citadel.icyb.net.ua (8.8.8p3/ICyb-2.3exp) with ESMTP id TAA01021; Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:18:00 +0200 (EET) (envelope-from avg@icyb.net.ua) Message-ID: <4B607547.8000307@icyb.net.ua> Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:17:59 +0200 From: Andriy Gapon User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (X11/20091206) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Dan Naumov References: In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.7 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: FreeBSD-STABLE Mailing List , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: booting off GPT partitions X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:18:07 -0000 on 27/01/2010 18:45 Dan Naumov said the following: > Hey > > I was under the impression that everyone and their dog is using GPT > partitioning in FreeBSD these days, including for boot drives and that > I was just being unlucky with my current NAS motherboard (Intel > D945GCLF2) having supposedly shaky support for GPT boot. But right now > I am having an email exchange with Supermicro support (whom I > contacted since I am pondering their X7SPA-H board for a new system), > who are telling me that booting off GPT requires UEFI BIOS, which is > supposedly a very new thing and that for example NONE of their current > motherboards have support for this. > > Am I misunderstanding something or is the Supermicro support tech misguided? Perhaps both :-) It depends on what booting capabilities you need from your BIOS. With FreeBSD we currently typically don't use "pure" GPT and use Protective MBR and install real boot code into a special boot partition. Protective MBR looks like a "normal" MBR to BIOS, and boot code in Protective MBR is smart to find the boot partition and hand off boot process to code in it. This way you can almost have the best of both worlds, but with some limitations (like multibooting). I don't know what other OSes do or expect in this area. Obligatory wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table#Legacy_MBR_.28LBA_0.29 -- Andriy Gapon