Hybrid partition tables -- can gpart make them?

From: Karl Denninger <karl_at_denninger.net>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2022 13:19:38 UTC
First, the "why" -- I wish to have *two* OS partitions, a data partition 
and a config partition under NanoBSD on a Pi3 or 4. Both boot using EFI 
and the "3", at least, appears to refuse to do so off a GPT-labeled 
disk.  This means I need *five* slices and MBR can only do 4.

I attempted to have one slice be "Freebsd" with the two OS partitions 
inside it, which would work *except* it doesn't because I can't set 
"bootme" on those; the EFI loader always finds the first usable UFS 
partition and boots it.  I need to be able to toggle that to boot the 
*second* partition.

I've replaced boot1.efi (quite some time ago) with loader_lua.efi in the 
EFI partition.  This works, but there does not appear to be a way to 
tell it that I want it to default to something other than the first 
bootable partition it finds.

The intent is to enable the capability to upgrade the OS without having 
to wipe/reload the card the unit boots from, then set the other 
partition as the  "next boot."  This works quite nicely with nanoBSD 
generally for MBR-bootable devices (and I use it with the pcEngines 
boards), but doesn't on the Pi due to requiring the EFI partition which 
means I run out of slots, never mind that the loader will still find and 
boot the first one.

-- 
Karl Denninger
karl@denninger.net
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