Re: UEFI question

On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 1:50 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2022, 11:42 AM Alan Somers <asomers@freebsd.org> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 9:27 AM John Kennedy <warlock@phouka.net> wrote:
>> >
>> > On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 02:32:21PM +0200, Julien Cigar wrote:
>> > > I have a Dell R340 server on which installed a 13.0-RELEASE and then
>> > > upgraded to 13.1-RELEASE (through freebsd-update). ZFS is used
>> (raidz2).
>> > >
>> > > The system has the following partitions:
>> https://gist.github.com/silenius/2defdd5480c5c1bc9ba2ff8940756466
>> > > Some things regarding UEFI are not clear to me:
>> > > - as you can see in the partition list, the installer created an EFI
>> > > partition on all 4 drives, however it looks like only the first one
>> has
>> > > has been populated (an mounted):
>> https://gist.github.com/silenius/1220c953f905d868c1615fd0e7122bbf .. why
>> ?
>> > > - if I understand well if my da0 disk dies the system becomes
>> > >   unbootable (
>> https://gist.github.com/silenius/51d202053295270eaaeb2c02316165ee)..
>> correct?
>> > > - what's the correct way to fix this? should I newfs_msdos on each EFI
>> > >   partition and copy /boot/loader.efi as /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI? or
>> > >   should I use efibootmgr?
>> > >
>> > > Thanks for enlightening me :)
>> >
>> > I use UEFI to multi-boot a lot myself, but not through efibootmgr (vs
>> > picking it via UEFI/BIOS on boot manually).  I'm multi-booting windows
>> > and FreeBSD, so I'm being (justifiably) paranoid, but not based on
>> > being burnt in recent memory.
>> >
>> > Depending on how your system works (drives are enumerated at startup),
>> > in theory any of your disks could be da0.  If you've only got a working
>> > EFI partition on one, that is probably hedging your bets a bit but yes,
>> > if that drive died, you'd probably be dead.
>> >
>> > In my dual-disk setups, I'd see an EFI and a freebsd-boot (BIOS)
>> partition
>> > on both disks, I split my total swap between the two (not mirrored), and
>> > did ZFS "raiding" (mirroring-ish, usually) across the freebsd-zfs
>> partitions.
>> >
>> > In my case, using the UEFI/BIOS from the motherboard, I could manually
>> > pick a disk to boot from which let me vet UEFI or ZFS bootblock changes
>> > for sanity before committing to both.  But yes, I'd upgrade them both to
>> > the same thing once I was sure it would work.
>>
>> I just noticed the same problem.  For mirrored installs, the
>> 13.1-RELEASE installer only formats the efi partition on one hard
>> disk.  Shouldn't it do both?
>>
>
>
> We go back and forth on this question.... I think we should, but others
> got grumpy when I suggested it. Maybe just all the drives in the zpool used
> for the BE?
>
> Warner
>

Just a “yes, please.” If you’re installing zfs root on a mirror of disks,
POLA suggests the required boot bits are on both disks, too.

Thanks,
  - Eric

>