gpart backup, restore and bootcode

[Arthur Chance]

On 27/05/2014 08:59, Janos Dohanics wrote:
> Hello list members,
>
> Do the commands gpart backup and gpart restore also back up and restore
> the bootcode? The gpart(8) man page says:
>
> "restore   Restore the partition table from a backup previously created
>             by the backup action and read from standard input.  Only the
>             par- tition table is restored.  This action does not affect
>             the con- tent of partitions.  After restoring the partition
>             table and writing bootcode if needed, user data must be
>             restored from backup."
>
> I read this section as "yes" - is this correct? I assume "yes" since my
> bootcode is embedded having been added using "gpart bootcode -b ..."
> and thus "embed-ded in the partitioning scheme's metadata".
>
> Is there a way to show/verify if bootcode is written to the disk?
>

If you actually try "gpart backup" you get something like

arthur at fileserver[0]> gpart backup ada0
GPT 128
1   freebsd-boot        40       128
2    freebsd-ufs       168   2097152 fs-root  [bootme]
3   freebsd-swap   2097320  16777216 fs-swap
4    freebsd-ufs  18874536   2097152 fs-usr
5    freebsd-ufs  20971688   2097152 fs-spare1
6    freebsd-ufs  23068840   4194304 fs-tmp
7    freebsd-ufs  27263144   2097152 fs-spare2
8    freebsd-ufs  29360296  10485760 fs-usr-obj
9    freebsd-ufs  39846056  20971520 fs-var
10   freebsd-ufs  60817576  20971520 fs-usr-local
11   freebsd-ufs  81789096   4194304 fs-usr-src

which is pretty much a variant of "gpart show" on the same disk plus a 
line saying how big the GPT is. No sign of a PMBR bootstrap in that.