Re: Question of installing over SAS controller and USB flash

From: azathanai@icloud.com <azathanai_at_icloud.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2023 14:30:09 UTC 
OK.
I've flashed the card with the mini-memstick and now it boots and starts the installation for FreeBSD, which is fine. However when it goes on partitioning of the drives, I'm not sure what to do.

  1.  I can mark all drives on the sas controller for auto-zfs, but if the flash card is not "included" then the machine will reboot to the installation again.
  2.  I can include the flash card in the installation of auto-zfs, but that means to have the card as root space and will not be able to use the big drives.
  3.  I need to manually setup the partitions, having the efi and /boot on the flash card and eventually mirrored on all other drives and have the / on the SAS drives, but doesn't have a clue how to do that.

Is 3 the correct way to proceed and is any help on that possible?


Cyberly yours,
Nikolay Balov
________________________________
From: owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org <owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org> on behalf of azathanai@icloud.com <azathanai@icloud.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2023 09:14
To: Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd@quip.cz>
Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org>
Subject: Re: Question of installing over SAS controller and USB flash

Hey Miroslav,
thank you for the help.
I've tried with the first part of your suggestion - gpart bootcode, but that was not enough. I suppose I do need the /boot on the flash card, as I've installed Linux and put the /boot "folder" on the flash and everything was working flawlessly.
I'll try your suggestion with the memstick. Just a question there.
Do I need to make the "gpart bootcode" part if I'm creating the memstick, or the memstick has everything needed to boot from it, i.e. it has the bootcodes?

Thanks again for your help and willingness to waste your time on a noob questions!

Cyberly yours,
Nikolay Balov


________________________________
From: owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org <owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org> on behalf of Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd@quip.cz>
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2023 16:49
To: azathanai@icloud.com <azathanai@icloud.com>; Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org>
Subject: Re: Question of installing over SAS controller and USB flash

On 11/10/2023 14:02, azathanai@icloud.com wrote:
> Hey Warner,
> the box is very featureLESS (an old Xyratex HS-1235T box, as far as I
> researched it).
> T2029_QR v1.3.ai (hackspace.org.uk)
> <https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/w/images/b/b2/HS-1235T-ATX_Quick_Reference_Sheet.pdf>
> (5) Xyratex 0944037-03 Motherboard Mystery SOLVED : homelab (reddit.com)
> <https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/8loge6/xyratex_094403703_motherboard_mystery_solved/>
>
> Through the POST process and the BIOS there is no option to get into the
> SAS controller and enable its BIOS. I would love to install FreeBSD
> directly on the drives and not to deal with the flash card, but I
> suppose the lack of controller BIOS is the reason the box comes with
> reader and card directly.

[..]

This depends on at what stage the computer starts to see the disk behind
the SAS controller. I had an old HP server that only saw one disk out of
four in the BIOS, so it couldn't boot from RAIDZ, but it was enough to
make a 10GB partition on each disk as a 4 way ZFS mirror, boot from that
and use the rest of each disk for the main RAIDZ storage (4x 8TB).

Maybe it would have been enough to use a USB flash drive for the
freebsd-boot partition in GPT scheme and then continue boot from the
disks on the SAS controller.

gpart create -s GPT da0
gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr da0
gpart add -b 40 -s 512 -t freebsd-boot da0
gpart bootcode -p /boot/zfsgptboot -i 1 da0

As long as the computer boots from the installer CD, FreeBSD with RAIDZ
can be installed on the disks behind the SAS controller without any
modification, only the USB flash drive must provide the boot.

If the USB flash drive must also contain a UFS /boot partition, then
copy an image that can be downloaded from the web as a "mini-memstick"
to the USB flash drive
https://www.freebsd.org/releases/13.2R/announce/ (use dd according to
the instructions)
Or again, create a complete installation from the FreeBSD installer on
the USB flash drive.

But the installation to big drives with RAIDZ should be done normally
from the FreeBSD installer. No modifications needed.

Kind regards
Miroslav Lachman