Can't boot on ZFS without GPT

Olivier SMEDTS olivier at gid0.org
Fri Feb 13 14:49:40 PST 2009


Hello,

I wasn't able to boot on a ZFS pool without using GPT slices. My MBR
partitioned disk has a type 0xa5 (165) active slice "ad0s2". I tried
the following :

copy zfsboot
# dd if=/boot/zfsboot of=/dev/ad0s2 count=1
# dd if=/boot/zfsboot of=/dev/ad0s2 skip=1 seek=1024
create pool and root filesystem
# zpool create -o altroot=/mnt pool ad0s2
# zfs create pool/freebsd
# zpool set bootfs=pool/freebsd pool
install base system
# cd /usr/src/
# make installworld DESTDIR=/mnt/freebsd/
# make installkernel DESTDIR=/mnt/freebsd/
# make distribution DESTDIR=/mnt/freebsd/
# cp /boot/zfs/zpool.cache /mnt/freebsd/boot/zfs/
# cp /boot/loader.conf /mnt/freebsd/boot/
# echo 'vfs.root.mountfrom="zfs:pool/freebsd"' >> /mnt/freebsd/boot/loader.conf
# touch /mnt/freebsd/etc/fstab
# cp /etc/rc.conf /mnt/freebsd/etc/
reboot...

I also tried with a bsdlabel, created the pool on ad0s2a (fstype ZFS),
still no luck...
No problem with another disk and a GPT partition scheme. But I can't
convert this one to GPT cause it's big and I don't have enough backup
space.

Anyone here having a working ZFS-only root with MBR slices, or more
informations ?

Thanks


-- 
Olivier Smedts                                                 _
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