Re: FreeBSD, boot environments and /dev

On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 9:21 AM Dave Cottlehuber <dch@skunkwerks.at> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 12 May 2022, at 07:12, Michael Schuster wrote:
> > On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 11:38 PM Dave Cottlehuber <dch@skunkwerks.at> wrote:
> >> On Wed, 11 May 2022, at 14:58, Michael Schuster wrote:
> >> > I then created a new BE, mounted it on /mnt, removed /mnt/dev/* (only
> >> > regular files and empty directories). Booting into that BE didn't work
> >> > either, I got errors about missing "/dev/" files (can't recall the
> >> > exact names).
> >> >
> >> > What do you guys (plural ;-)) think?
> >
> > Hi Dave,
> > thx for your perseverance :-)
> >
> > I have (at least) one question for you before I attempt this:
> > where do I get these .txz files?
>
> https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/snapshots/amd64/amd64/14.0-CURRENT/
> https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/amd64/amd64/13.1-RC6/
>
> > should devfs be in /etc/fstab? in my current BE, it isn't ...
>
> this is the bare minimum I used. NB my partitions have artisanal
> GPT labels, yours will probably be different.
>
> # Device                Mountpoint              FStype          Options                         Dump    Pass#
> #/dev/gpt/swap0         none                    swap            sw                              0       0
> /dev/gpt/efiboot        /boot/efi               msdosfs         rw,late,longnames               0       0
> tmpfs                   /tmp                    tmpfs           rw,mode=01777,size=120g         0       0
>
> thats all I needed to boot to userland & login. I'm reasonably sure that,
> assuming you have a default zfs install, you'd not need anything in /etc/fstab
> to boot.
>
> > if so: do you have an example of such a line? In the instances I looked
> > up, I wasn't quite able to make it work (but perhaps that's a dead end
> > anyway).
> >
> >> # bectl activate -t vanilla
> >
> > does that ("activate -t") work on UEFI systems? The last time I used it
> > (at least a year ago), it wasn't.
>
> Yes it does here. failing that just use `bectl activate`. The -t is
> a very nice addition.
>
> Well, we're definitely on the FreeBSD-current email list here, so it's
> definitely in CURRENT, and 13.1 RC.

Dave, all:

findings:
1) temporary activation doesn't work for me: bectl accepts the option
but there's no effect I noticed(*), beadm refuses the option.
2) booting into 'vanilla' worked - I got into a root shell on the console.

Since I copied the files you mention (/etc/fstab /etc/rc.conf
/boot/loader.conf) unchanged, that looks good.

so ... this is probably a good starting point (again ;-)).

I rebooted into the last "good" BE, mounted vanilla a clone of vanilla
on /mnt (with vanilla a point to start again if anything goes wrong)
and started with "pkg -r /mnt install pkg" ...

but I admit it's getting late today, so I'll be lazy and ask if you
have any further recommendations - I've come to expect them to work
nicely :-) (and yes, I am grateful!)

*) unless the first BE to be shown when I select 'boot environments'
at boot isn't in fact the active one

cheers
Michael
-- 
Michael Schuster
http://recursiveramblings.wordpress.com/
recursion, n: see 'recursion'