Some notes on RootOnZFS article in wiki

[Mel Flynn]

On Monday 21 December 2009 06:27:59 Robert Noland wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-12-21 at 06:14 -0900, Mel Flynn wrote:
> > On Monday 21 December 2009 06:05:14 Ollivier Robert wrote:
> > > According to Mel Flynn:
> > > > 2) `gpart set -a active -i 1 ad4' gave me 'active: device not
> > > > configured'. This error isn't mentioned (debugflags didn't help) in
> > > > the wiki nor the missing DIAGNOSTICS section in the gpart man page.
> > > > In my case the system booted, but it's nice to know what the error
> > > > means and whether you can
> > >
> > > Most of the time, you don't even need it.  On modern machines, system
> > > will boot from the GPT "freebsd-boot" partition w/o having it active.
> >
> > And you would know whether you fall into the 'modern machines' category
> > how?
> >
> > Also, did this error tell me I don't need it, did it tell me it didn't
> > work even though it tried and now my partition info is screwed or is it
> > completely harmless? That's what I'd like to know (either in the article,
> > but probably better in gpart manpage).
> 
> The reason that it fails is that "active" is not a parameter for GPT
> based geom_part.  It is only for geom_mbr.  As I said, this is usually
> no longer needed if you are using most newer branches, which if you are
> doing zfs boot, you should be.  Lots of zfs boot fixes have gone into
> the code lately.

Case in point, 8.0-RELEASE install media. So from what I'm reading this step 
should really be deleted from the how to, since it won't work for geom_part 
and isn't needed to begin with, unless you have a buggy BIOS.
-- 
Mel