Upgrading FreeBSd when using a zfs-only installation?

[Randal L. Schwartz]

>>>>> "Daniel" == Daniel Staal <DStaal at usa.net> writes:

Daniel> On Wed, March 16, 2011 2:36 pm, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
>> 
Randal> SOMEONE here knows.  Please help.
>> 
>> So, nobody knows?
>> 
>> Most of the other answers were about a source-code upgrade, not a binary
>> upgrade.

Daniel> I thought Matthew Seamans' answer sounded pretty definitive:

>> A system update via freebsd-update or otherwise won't touch whatever
>> bootblocks you have installed.  So if you have already installed
>> gptzfsboot and your system already boots ZFS v12 then it will continue to
>> boot ZFS v12 without your touching anything to do with boot blocks.

But this was absolutely *not* the case with 8.0 to 8.1.  I had tried it
naively in a VM, and thank goodness, because the VM failed to boot.

Then I googled, and found
http://forums.freebsd.org/showpost.php?p=94557&postcount=19 which when I
followed, and it worked fine.

Thus, when I did my "live" 8.0 to 8.1 upgrades, I followed that extra
"gpart bootcode" step, and everything worked fine.

Therefore, Matthew Seaman can't be trusted with his answer.  He
apparently did not boot a ZFS-on-root disk with a freebsd-update from
8.0 to 8.1, or he would not have said what he did.

The question I have is, does anyone know *definitively* if the same
thing that broke 8.0 to 8.1 will also likely occur in 8.1 to 8.2, or
does the bootloader in 8.2 now contain what /boot/gptzfsboot contained
in 8.1? As in, does FreeBSD 8.2 now support *native* ZFS booting, or
will it forever be a kluge?

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn at stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.posterous.com/ for Smalltalk discussion