Booting FreeBSD with MBR, GELI, ZFS, and changing provider names

Sat Feb 15 23:12:18 UTC 2020

On 2020-02-13 20:08, David Christensen wrote:
> I put my operating system installations on single, small 2.5" SATA
> SSD's and I put 2.5" SATA trayless disk bays in my computers.  This
> both facilitates imaging and allows me to mix and match as required.
> 
> 
> For FreeBSD, I use ZFS throughout.
> 
> 
> Not all of my computers support booting from GPT, so I use MBR for 
> system drives.
> 
> 
> The default FreeBSD installer wants to use the entire disk, so I
> hacked the memstick installer and/or choose the following in the
> installer:
> 
> - 1 MiB alignment for everything
> 
> - 14 GiB slice
> 
> - 2 GiB boot partition, copies=2
> 
> - 2 GiB swap partition, mirrored
> 
> - 10 GiB root partition, copies=2
> 
> 
> The most obvious downside is that MBR does not support labels.  So,
> the FreeBSD boot system uses device node names.  This means I have to
> ensure that the system drive is always ada0 -- during install,
> whenever I move the drive to another machine, and whenever I add or
> remove drives or controllers.  If the drive comes up as the wrong
> device node, I move SATA cables around.

Here is the example system:

2020-02-15 13:25:07 toor at beastie ~
# freebsd-version ; uname -a
12.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD beastie.tracy.holgerdanske.com 12.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE 
r354233 GENERIC  amd64

Here is the system disk:

2020-02-15 13:18:27 toor at beastie ~
# gpart show -p ada0 ada0s1
=>       63  117231345    ada0  MBR  (56G)
          63       1985          - free -  (993K)
        2048   29360128  ada0s1  freebsd  [active]  (14G)
    29362176   87869232          - free -  (42G)

=>       0  29360128   ada0s1  BSD  (14G)
          0   4194304  ada0s1a  freebsd-zfs  (2.0G)
    4194304   4194304  ada0s1b  freebsd-swap  (2.0G)
    8388608  20971520  ada0s1d  freebsd-zfs  (10G)

2020-02-15 14:02:28 toor at beastie ~
# geli status | egrep 'Name|swap|ada0'
            Name  Status  Components
     ada0s1d.eli  ACTIVE  ada0s1d
mirror/swap.eli  ACTIVE  mirror/swap

2020-02-15 14:03:11 toor at beastie ~
# zpool list | egrep 'NAME|boot|root'
NAME            SIZE  ALLOC   FREE  CKPOINT  EXPANDSZ   FRAG    CAP 
DEDUP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
beastie_zroot  9.50G  1.05G  8.45G        -         -     2%    11% 
1.04x  ONLINE  -
bootpool       1.88G   158M  1.72G        -         -     0%     8% 
1.00x  ONLINE  -

2020-02-15 14:03:40 toor at beastie ~
# zfs list | egrep 'NAME|boot|root '
NAME                         USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
beastie_zroot               1.10G  8.15G    88K  /beastie_zroot
bootpool                     157M  1.60G   156M  /bootpool

Note that there are no labels on the partitions:

2020-02-15 13:19:10 toor at beastie ~
# gpart show -p -l ada0 ada0s1
=>       63  117231345    ada0  MBR  (56G)
          63       1985          - free -  (993K)
        2048   29360128  ada0s1  (null)  [active]  (14G)
    29362176   87869232          - free -  (42G)

=>       0  29360128   ada0s1  BSD  (14G)
          0   4194304  ada0s1a  (null)  (2.0G)
    4194304   4194304  ada0s1b  (null)  (2.0G)
    8388608  20971520  ada0s1d  (null)  (10G)

Here is /boot/loader.conf:

2020-02-15 14:11:12 toor at beastie ~
# cat /boot/loader.conf
aesni_load="YES"
geli_ada0s1d_keyfile0_load="YES"
geli_ada0s1d_keyfile0_name="/boot/encryption.key"
geli_ada0s1d_keyfile0_type="ada0s1d:geli_keyfile0"
geom_eli_load="YES"
geom_eli_passphrase_prompt="YES"
geom_mirror_load="YES"
kern.geom.label.disk_ident.enable="0"
kern.geom.label.gptid.enable="0"
opensolaris_load="YES"
vfs.root.mountfrom="zfs:beastie_zroot/ROOT/default"
zfs_load="YES"
zpool_cache_load="YES"
zpool_cache_name="/boot/zfs/zpool.cache"
zpool_cache_type="/boot/zfs/zpool.cache"

If the provider names change, the FreeBSD boot process will fail when it 
reaches the point of decrypting the root partition -- it prompts for the 
passphrase, I enter the correct passphrase, the correct passphrase is 
rejected, the process repeats two more times, and then I am locked out.

I am trying to figure out how to get the above FreeBSD system disk to 
boot correctly when the provider names change.  This includes moving the 
system image between HDD's, SSD's, and USB flash drives with dd(1) (e.g. 
provider names ada* and da*).

I am curious about the following tunables in /boot/loader.conf:

     kern.geom.label.disk_ident.enable="0"
     kern.geom.label.gptid.enable="0"

loader.conf(5) mentions:

     kern.geom.label.*.enable

Where are these two tunables documented, and does the following tunable 
exist?

     kern.geom.label.eli.enable

Also, my ZFS data disks use GPT, have GPT labels, and they work. 
Looking at the /boot/loader.conf settings, above, I would expect that 
GPT labels should not work (?).

(The solution on Debian GNU/Linux is to use /dev/disk/by-partuuid/* for 
swap and UUID=* for root in /etc/crypttab.)

On 2020-02-14 22:50, Dewayne Geraghty wrote:
> when using "glabel status" I can see both the glabel assigned label
> and the tunefs file system label on an MBR usb drive
> 
> label/ss1     N/A  da0s2d ufs/ss1     N/A  da0s2d label/keys     N/A
> da0s2e ufs/keys     N/A  da0s2e

On 2020-02-15 06:30, RW via freebsd-questions wrote:
> You can use glabel to label the drive, or label the individual
> partitions.

On 2020-02-15 11:14, Polytropon wrote:
> Actually, there are several possible methods for labeling:
> 
> 1. glabel (GEOM label) example: /dev/label/usr
> 
> 2. tunefs label (UFS permanent label) example: /dev/ufs/usr
> 
> 3. UFS-ID example: /dev/ufsid/486b6fc16926168e
> 
> Sources:
> 
> https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/geom-glabel.html
> 
> http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/labels.html

The first URL provided by Polytropon and 'man glabel' both indicate that 
glabel(8) labels are written to the last sector of a provider.  Neither 
states what happens when the provider contains GELI.  I am hesitant to 
try it and break my system.

'man tunefs' indicates that tunefs(8) is for UFS.

David