Re: UEFI question

On 11/22/2022 5:50 pm, Eric Borisch wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 1:50 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2022, 11:42 AM Alan Somers <asomers@freebsd.org> wrote: 
> On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 9:27 AM John Kennedy <warlock@phouka.net> 
> wrote:
>> 
>> On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 02:32:21PM +0200, Julien Cigar wrote:
>>> I have a Dell R340 server on which installed a 13.0-RELEASE and then
>>> upgraded to 13.1-RELEASE (through freebsd-update). ZFS is used 
>>> (raidz2).
>>> 
>>> The system has the following partitions: 
>>> https://gist.github.com/silenius/2defdd5480c5c1bc9ba2ff8940756466
>>> Some things regarding UEFI are not clear to me:
>>> - as you can see in the partition list, the installer created an EFI
>>> partition on all 4 drives, however it looks like only the first one 
>>> has
>>> has been populated (an mounted): 
>>> https://gist.github.com/silenius/1220c953f905d868c1615fd0e7122bbf .. 
>>> why ?
>>> - if I understand well if my da0 disk dies the system becomes
>>>   unbootable 
>>> (https://gist.github.com/silenius/51d202053295270eaaeb2c02316165ee).. 
>>> correct?
>>> - what's the correct way to fix this? should I newfs_msdos on each 
>>> EFI
>>>   partition and copy /boot/loader.efi as /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI? or
>>>   should I use efibootmgr?
>>> 
>>> Thanks for enlightening me :)
>> 
>> I use UEFI to multi-boot a lot myself, but not through efibootmgr (vs
>> picking it via UEFI/BIOS on boot manually).  I'm multi-booting windows
>> and FreeBSD, so I'm being (justifiably) paranoid, but not based on
>> being burnt in recent memory.
>> 
>> Depending on how your system works (drives are enumerated at startup),
>> in theory any of your disks could be da0.  If you've only got a 
>> working
>> EFI partition on one, that is probably hedging your bets a bit but 
>> yes,
>> if that drive died, you'd probably be dead.
>> 
>> In my dual-disk setups, I'd see an EFI and a freebsd-boot (BIOS) 
>> partition
>> on both disks, I split my total swap between the two (not mirrored), 
>> and
>> did ZFS "raiding" (mirroring-ish, usually) across the freebsd-zfs 
>> partitions.
>> 
>> In my case, using the UEFI/BIOS from the motherboard, I could manually
>> pick a disk to boot from which let me vet UEFI or ZFS bootblock 
>> changes
>> for sanity before committing to both.  But yes, I'd upgrade them both 
>> to
>> the same thing once I was sure it would work.
> 
> I just noticed the same problem.  For mirrored installs, the
> 13.1-RELEASE installer only formats the efi partition on one hard
> disk.  Shouldn't it do both?
> 
> We go back and forth on this question.... I think we should, but others 
> got grumpy when I suggested it. Maybe just all the drives in the zpool 
> used for the BE?
> 
> Warner

Just a "yes, please." If you're installing zfs root on a mirror of 
disks, POLA suggests the required boot bits are on both disks, too.

Thanks,
   - Eric

> 

This is my common setup for every FreeBSD box I build:

❯ gpart show
=>        40  3905945520  mfid0  GPT  (1.8T)
           40      532480      1  efi  (260M)
       532520    16779224      3  freebsd-swap  (8.0G)
     17311744  3888633816      4  freebsd-zfs  (1.8T)

=>        40  3905945520  mfid1  GPT  (1.8T)
           40      532480      1  efi  (260M)
       532520    16779224      3  freebsd-swap  (8.0G)
     17311744  3888633816      4  freebsd-zfs  (1.8T)

=>        40  5859442608  mfid2  GPT  (2.7T)
           40      532480      1  efi  (260M)
       532520    16779224      3  freebsd-swap  (8.0G)
     17311744  5842130904      4  freebsd-zfs  (2.7T)

=>        40  5859442608  mfid3  GPT  (2.7T)
           40      532480      1  efi  (260M)
       532520    16779224      3  freebsd-swap  (8.0G)
     17311744  5842130904      4  freebsd-zfs  (2.7T)

=>        40  3905945520  mfid4  GPT  (1.8T)
           40      532480      1  efi  (260M)
       532520    16779224      3  freebsd-swap  (8.0G)
     17311744  3888633816      4  freebsd-zfs  (1.8T)

=>        40  3905945520  mfid5  GPT  (1.8T)
           40      532480      1  efi  (260M)
       532520    16777216      3  freebsd-swap  (8.0G)
     17309736  3888635824      4  freebsd-zfs  (1.8T)

ler in 🌐 borg in ~ via C v14.0.5-clang on ☁️  (us-east-1)
❯

Disk number and sizes vary but the setup is the same EFI or BOOT or 
Both, swap, and ZFS on *ALL* disks

-- 
Larry Rosenman                     http://www.lerctr.org/~ler
Phone: +1 214-642-9640                 E-Mail: ler@lerctr.org
US Mail: 5708 Sabbia Dr, Round Rock, TX 78665-2106