Lenovo T420 installlation with zfsroot and GPT/UEFI (FreeBSD 10.1)

[Bigby James]

On 04/22, Niklaas Baudet von Gersdorff wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to install FreeBSD 10.1 on my a bit old but working Lenovo
> Thinkpad T420. In the ideal case I am able to install it with an
> encrypted ZFS root and GPT/UEFI. The problem I encountered indicate that
> this might not be possible though.

Nope. First off, as of 10.1-RELEASE FreeBSD cannot boot from a ZFS root
partition via UEFI. It's simply not possible right now. Second, my T520 will
only boot FreeBSD from a GPT disk via UEFI, and the T420 likely has the same
firmware. So you can format an MBR disk with ZFS and boot via legacy mode, but
ZFS can't boot from GPT with UEFI. Or you can do what I did, and create a 1.5G
partition for the root ('/') filesystem, format it to UFS, and leave the rest of
the disk for ZFS.

- Bigby

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