FreeBSD 9.0 - GPT boot problems?
Torfinn Ingolfsen
torfinn.ingolfsen at getmail.no
Sat Aug 4 14:23:43 UTC 2012
On Sat, 04 Aug 2012 03:10:52 -0400
Thomas Mueller <mueller23 at insightbb.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 3:09 PM, Torfinn Ingolfsen
> > <torfinn.ingolfsen at getmail.no> wrote:
> > > Just a short update on this machine (Acer Aspire X1470) and the GPT / UEFI situation.
>
> > > Today I set up another partition, EFI system partition. The partyitions now looks like this:
> > > root at kg-vm2# gpart show ada0
> > > => 34 250069613 ada0 GPT (119G)
> > > 34 128 1 freebsd-boot (64k)
> > > 162 119537664 2 freebsd-ufs (57G)
> > > 119537826 8388608 3 freebsd-swap (4.0G)
> > > 127926434 121634816 4 freebsd-ufs (58G)
> > > 249561250 204800 5 efi (100M)
> > > 249766050 303597 - free - (148M)
>
> > > I formatted the partition like this:
> > > root at kg-vm2# newfs_msdos -F32 /dev/ada0p5
> > > newfs_msdos: trim 50 sectors to adjust to a multiple of 63
> > > /dev/ada0p5: 204512 sectors in 12782 FAT32 clusters (8192 bytes/cluster)
> > > BytesPerSec=512 SecPerClust=16 ResSectors=32 FATs=2 Media=0xf0 SecPerTrack=63 Heads=16 HiddenSecs=0 HugeSectors=204750 FATsecs=100 RootCluster=2 FSInfo=1
> > +Backup=2
>
> > > I have tried putting an EFI shell on it (I got the idea from this[1] page, I have tried both the 1.0 and 2.0 x64 shell), like this:
> > > root at kg-vm2# mount -t msdosfs /dev/ada0p5 /mnt
> > > root at kg-vm2# ls -l /mnt
> > > total 848
> > > drwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 8192 Aug 3 14:30 EFI
> > > drwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 8192 Aug 3 16:21 boot
> > > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 847232 Aug 3 14:56 shellx64.efi
> > > root at kg-vm2# ls -l /mnt/boot
> > > total 760
> > > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 771072 Aug 3 16:23 bootx64.efi
> > > root at kg-vm2# ls -l /mnt/EFI
> > > total 16
> > > drwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 8192 Aug 3 14:30 FreeBSD
> > > drwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 8192 Aug 3 15:06 boot
> > > root at kg-vm2# ls -l /mnt/EFI/boot
> > > total 760
> > > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 771072 Aug 3 15:29 bootx64.efi
>
> > > but no dice - it is not working, it still prints "ERROR: No boot disk has been detected or the disk has failed."
> > > when I try to boot from this disk.
> > > How do I figure out where this UEFI firmware that Acer has put in this machine is getting it's boot manager and or boot loader from?
> > > I tried running 'strings -f' on the BIOS file (sorry, UEFI firmware), that got me all the EFI error messages, but nothing useful.
> > > Googling didn't help either.
>
> > > References:
> > > 1) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface
>
> > It's not clear from your message, but did you use the gpart bootcode
> > command to write the protective MBR and the gptboot code as documented
> > in the gpart(8) man page?
> > --
> > R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
> > E-mail: kob6558 at gmail.com
>
> The gpart bootcode command is quite apart from and unrelated to (as far as I can tell) the EFI partition.
Yes, this is what I have found out too.
> I think the EFI partition is supposed to be the first partition on a GPT-partitioned disk.
This is not required by the specification as far as I can tell, but there are writings on the net saying that some implementations
requires this (MS Win7 for example).
> I have installed FreeBSD to a USB stick, GPT-partitioned with three partitions: boot, root and swap.
FWIW, I also use GPT-partitoned disks on many of my other machines; they work fine. It is (so far) only this machine which has this problem.
>
> EFI partition is to allow sharing a hard drive with multiple OS installations.
The EFI system partition is also the place where (U)EFI firmwae will look for boot loaders, in order to load operating systems.
YMMV.
--
Torfinn Ingolfsen <torfinn.ingolfsen at getmail.no>
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