FreeBSD 11.2 will not boot after zfs install [solved?]

[doug]

Excuse the top post, I considered just deleting the stuff below but this email 
is self-contained done this way.

I started out being convinced this was an install bug. My efforts in futility 
are documented below. After getting the BIOS settings the way recommended by the 
various UEFI docs and HP said they should be, I installed 11.2 manually using 
the only livecd. The end result was the same, the EFI routine first invoked did 
not find anything to pass control to. At this point I think two things: (1) the 
zfs install over wrote something it should not have in the EFI partition; and 
(2) the HP 'reset the factory defaults' setting did not put it back. If you are 
going to do a FreeBSD only install on an HP I would recommend backing up the UFI 
partition before doing anything else. I might have had a better result if I left 
windows on the system. I made many mistakes putting FreeBSD along with windows 
on a Lenovo and in each case where I rendered the system not bootable the repair 
stuff baled me out. The fact that a non-zfs installed gave me confidence that 
the zfs install would be okay. It may be that FreeBSD needs outside assistance 
in a UEFI environment.

On Mon, 16 Jul 2018, DTD wrote:

> The system is an HP Pavilion 580-137c with UFI BIOS. First I tossed windows 
> and did a Guided GPT install setting up partitions as I normally do. I got 
> this system as a Poudriere build system. So I installed Poudriere + necessary 
> ports and built a repository. All this worked fine. So as I had "little" 
> invested in this system I thought I would install zfs. I used the install zfs 
> root option taking all defaults. After that the system would not boot. The 
> only difference I could see was bsdinstall no longer offered ACPI as an 
> option and the console came up with a higher resolution (1024x768 I think). 
> From here I tried all sorts of BIOS setting, secure boot on/off and some 
> other variations. In all cases, the install went without error and the system 
> would not boot giving no messages, just a black screen.
>
> So I went back to the guided GPT install. Using the livecd I ran fsck on each 
> of the ufs slices and then mounted them. This all worked fine but still 
> booting from disk gave only a black screen. so line I tried:
>
>   gpart set -a active /dev/ada0
>   gpart set -a bootme -i 1 /dev/ada0
>
> Currently I have:
>
> gpart show
> =>        40  1953525088  ada0  GPT  (932G)
>          40      409600     1  efi  [bootme]  (200M)
>      409640     8388608     2  freebsd-ufs  (4.0G)
>     8798248     4194304     3  freebsd-swap  (2.0G)
>    12992552   104857600     4  freebsd-ufs  (50G)
>   117850152    83886080     5  freebsd-ufs  (40G)
>   201736232  1751121920     6  freebsd-ufs  (835G)
>  1952858152      666976        - free -  (326M)
>
> =>        40  1953525088  diskid/DISK-87KE5PYNS  GPT  (932G)
>          40      409600                      1  efi  [bootme]  (200M)
>      409640     8388608                      2  freebsd-ufs  (4.0G)
>     8798248     4194304                      3  freebsd-swap  (2.0G)
>    12992552   104857600                      4  freebsd-ufs  (50G)
>   117850152    83886080                      5  freebsd-ufs  (40G)
>   201736232  1751121920                      6  freebsd-ufs  (835G)
>  1952858152      666976                         - free -  (326M)
>
> /dev/ada0p1 looks ok: in efi/boot
>   ls -l
>  -rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  393216 Apr 16 10:12 BOOTx64.efi*
>  -rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel      12 Apr 16 10:12 startup.nsh*
>
> however now booting from the disk gives the following:
>
>   Boot Device Not Found
>   Please install an operating system on your hard disk.
>
> This is formatted as white on blue in a centered box. I assume is from the 
> BIOS.
>
>
> _____
> Douglas Denault
> http://www.safeport.com
> doug at safeport.com
> Voice: 301-217-9220
>  Fax: 301-217-9277
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