Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Eugene M. Zheganin]

Hi.

On 19.12.2016 11:51, Warner Losh wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 18, 2016 at 11:34 PM, Eugene M. Zheganin  
> wrote:
>> I tried the UEFI boot sequence on a Supermicro server. It boots only
>> manually, gives some cryptic error while booting automatically. When
>> entering the path to the EFI loader in a appearing prompt - it boots
>> fine, but this kills the idea.
>>
>> I've written a message here about this, so far nobody answered (August,
>> 14th, "FreeBSD doesn't boot automatically from UEFI").
>>
>> Now it runs on gptzfsboot again, so 
> Which SuperMicro board? Our X9's have big issues with UEFI (though
> some versions of the boards seem to work). The X10's are rock solid.
>
The affected server has X9SCL/X9SCM, yup. Is there some workaround to
this, like flashing newer BIOS ?

Eugene.
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Warner Losh]

On Sun, Dec 18, 2016 at 11:34 PM, Eugene M. Zheganin  wrote:
> Hi.
>
> On 16.12.2016 22:08, Fernando Herrero Carrón wrote:
>> I am reading uefi(8) and it looks like FreeBSD 11 should be able to boot
>> using UEFI straight into ZFS, so I am thinking of converting that
>> freebsd-boot partition to an EFI partition, creating a FAT filesystem and
>> copying /boot/boot.efi there.
>>
>> How good of an idea is that? Would it really be that simple or am I missing
>> something? My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot,
>> everything is working fine otherwise.
>>
> I tried the UEFI boot sequence on a Supermicro server. It boots only
> manually, gives some cryptic error while booting automatically. When
> entering the path to the EFI loader in a appearing prompt - it boots
> fine, but this kills the idea.
>
> I've written a message here about this, so far nobody answered (August,
> 14th, "FreeBSD doesn't boot automatically from UEFI").
>
> Now it runs on gptzfsboot again, so 

Which SuperMicro board? Our X9's have big issues with UEFI (though
some versions of the boards seem to work). The X10's are rock solid.

Warner
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Eugene M. Zheganin]

Hi.

On 16.12.2016 22:08, Fernando Herrero Carrón wrote:
> I am reading uefi(8) and it looks like FreeBSD 11 should be able to boot
> using UEFI straight into ZFS, so I am thinking of converting that
> freebsd-boot partition to an EFI partition, creating a FAT filesystem and
> copying /boot/boot.efi there.
>
> How good of an idea is that? Would it really be that simple or am I missing
> something? My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot,
> everything is working fine otherwise.
>
I tried the UEFI boot sequence on a Supermicro server. It boots only
manually, gives some cryptic error while booting automatically. When
entering the path to the EFI loader in a appearing prompt - it boots
fine, but this kills the idea.

I've written a message here about this, so far nobody answered (August,
14th, "FreeBSD doesn't boot automatically from UEFI").

Now it runs on gptzfsboot again, so 

Eugene.
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Warren Block]

On Fri, 16 Dec 2016, Eric van Gyzen wrote:


On 12/16/2016 11:39, Slawa Olhovchenkov wrote:

On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 06:08:34PM +0100, Fernando Herrero Carrón wrote:


Hi everyone,

A few months ago I got myself a new box and I have been happily running
FreeBSD on it ever since. I noticed that the boot was not as fast as I had
expected and I've realized that, while my disk is GPT partitioned, the boot
process is still BIOS based:

% gpart show
=>   34  976773101  ada0  GPT  (466G)
 34  6- free -  (3.0K)
 40   1024 1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
   1064984- free -  (492K)
   2048   67108864 2  freebsd-swap  (32G)
   67110912  909662208 3  freebsd-zfs  (434G)
  976773120 15- free -  (7.5K)

I am reading uefi(8) and it looks like FreeBSD 11 should be able to boot
using UEFI straight into ZFS, so I am thinking of converting that
freebsd-boot partition to an EFI partition, creating a FAT filesystem and
copying /boot/boot.efi there.

How good of an idea is that? Would it really be that simple or am I missing
something? My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot,
everything is working fine otherwise.

Thanks in advance for your help.


I am also interesting by this case.
I think expand freebsd-boot to about 1M (size of /boot/boot1.efifat),
dding /boot/boot1.efifat and set to type to 'efi' may be enough. I am
never tried this.


I expect that would work.  It's slightly risky, though, since it doesn't let you
fall back to BIOS boot if EFI doesn't work.


The fallback in that case would just be changing that partition back to 
freebsd-boot and rewriting the bootcode to it.

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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Warren Block]

On Fri, 16 Dec 2016, Eric van Gyzen wrote:


On 12/16/2016 11:08, Fernando Herrero Carrón wrote:

Hi everyone,

A few months ago I got myself a new box and I have been happily running
FreeBSD on it ever since. I noticed that the boot was not as fast as I had
expected and I've realized that, while my disk is GPT partitioned, the boot
process is still BIOS based:

% gpart show
=>   34  976773101  ada0  GPT  (466G)
 34  6- free -  (3.0K)
 40   1024 1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
   1064984- free -  (492K)
   2048   67108864 2  freebsd-swap  (32G)
   67110912  909662208 3  freebsd-zfs  (434G)
  976773120 15- free -  (7.5K)

I am reading uefi(8) and it looks like FreeBSD 11 should be able to boot
using UEFI straight into ZFS, so I am thinking of converting that
freebsd-boot partition to an EFI partition, creating a FAT filesystem and
copying /boot/boot.efi there.

How good of an idea is that? Would it really be that simple or am I missing
something? My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot,
everything is working fine otherwise.


I would recommend creating another partition for EFI instead of replacing your
freebsd-boot partition, in order to have a working fallback in case EFI boot
doesn't work.  You would need to steal some space from your swap partition.


Be aware that some newer Dells really don't like to have both and will 
refuse to boot in either mode with such a setup.

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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Warner Losh]

On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 6:38 AM, Dimitry Andric  wrote:
> On 16 Dec 2016, at 23:56, Warner Losh  wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 11:00 AM, Dimitry Andric  wrote:
> ...
>>> Yes, this is almost exactly what I have done on a machine that was
>>> originally installed with gptzfsboot on the first partition, which was
>>> 512K.  Since all the partitions on this SSD were aligned to 1M, I
>>> reduced the size of the first partition to 224K, freeing up a hole of
>>> exactly 800K for an EFI partition:
> ...
>> You likely want to carve out more like 50MB instead of 800k for UEFI
>> partition. 800k is the minimum, but it also precludes many things you
>> may need to do with UEFI applications down the line.
>
> Well, this is the default boot1.efifat size.  If you think 50MB is more
> reasonable, the boot1.efifat size should have a corresponding size.

We shouldn't have a boot1.efifat at all. We should make the fat based
on what the size of the partition is. boot1.efifat is an ugly hack to
make the installers happy when we should have fixed the installers.
The standard suggests an even larger 200MB. On most modern drives, the
delta this usage is tiny, though on SD card-based systems 200MB takes
up too large a percentage.

> That said, as long as there are almost no such UEFI applications, I'm
> not bothering.  Besides, even if there were, I don't have any interest
> in the UEFI "ecosphere" as-is.  I see it as an ugly-but-necessary
> pre-bootloader environment only.

At work we get programs to run from time to time that upgrade BIOS
that's in different cards in our system, or to dump diagnostics. It's
helpful to have the space space when you need it, because when you
need it, you really need it. It's also used to deploy "capsules" that
have the upgrades for the BIOS (there's a standard now, but we don't
implement it all yet). There are secure boot things you need space for
as well.

If you judge from today's, barely enough to boot a single partition
w/o the other features of our traditional pre-/boot/loader
environment, I can see how you might think there's nothing but 'waste'
here. However, as we flesh out things, I think we'd be doing our users
a disservice from doing anything less than ~50MB by default.

Warner
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Brandon Allbery]

On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 9:29 AM, Fernando Herrero Carrón 
wrote:

> * While getting to FreeBSD's loader seems a bit faster (or maybe that's
> just confirmation bias), bringing up the system does not seem much faster.
>

Aside from working around some buggy boot BIOSes, the main speedup would be
not having to do a staged load in 16 bit mode with only 1MB RAM accessible.
I don't think this will be that noticeable.

-- 
brandon s allbery kf8nh   sine nomine associates
allber...@gmail.com  ballb...@sinenomine.net
unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonadhttp://sinenomine.net
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Brandon Allbery]

On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 8:21 AM, Fernando Herrero Carrón 
wrote:

> Just out of curiosity, what other functionality will UEFI provide that
> takes up 50M?
>

Multiple UEFI programs for diagnostics and such, possibly including
standalone repair images.

-- 
brandon s allbery kf8nh   sine nomine associates
allber...@gmail.com  ballb...@sinenomine.net
unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonadhttp://sinenomine.net
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Brandon Allbery]

On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 8:25 AM, Fernando Herrero Carrón 
wrote:

>
> My understanding is that BIOSes still boot through kind of a legacy 32-bit
> path and UEFI boots straight 64-bit with all the bells and whistles. In
> fact:


Actually, they boot through a legacy 16 bit path, with access to only the
first 1MB of RAM until they can initialize native mode.

-- 
brandon s allbery kf8nh   sine nomine associates
allber...@gmail.com  ballb...@sinenomine.net
unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonadhttp://sinenomine.net
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Dimitry Andric]

On 16 Dec 2016, at 23:56, Warner Losh  wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 11:00 AM, Dimitry Andric  wrote:
...
>> Yes, this is almost exactly what I have done on a machine that was
>> originally installed with gptzfsboot on the first partition, which was
>> 512K.  Since all the partitions on this SSD were aligned to 1M, I
>> reduced the size of the first partition to 224K, freeing up a hole of
>> exactly 800K for an EFI partition:
...
> You likely want to carve out more like 50MB instead of 800k for UEFI
> partition. 800k is the minimum, but it also precludes many things you
> may need to do with UEFI applications down the line.

Well, this is the default boot1.efifat size.  If you think 50MB is more
reasonable, the boot1.efifat size should have a corresponding size.

That said, as long as there are almost no such UEFI applications, I'm
not bothering.  Besides, even if there were, I don't have any interest
in the UEFI "ecosphere" as-is.  I see it as an ugly-but-necessary
pre-bootloader environment only.

-Dimitry



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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Ian Smith]

On Sat, 17 Dec 2016 10:49:48 +0100, Stefan Bethke wrote:
 > > Am 17.12.2016 um 07:12 schrieb Ian Smith :
 > > 
 > > On Fri, 16 Dec 2016 18:08:34 +0100, Fernando Herrero Carrón wrote:
 > >> My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot, 
 > >> everything is working fine otherwise.
 > > 
 > > I'm skeptical that UEFI boot would be any or noticeably faster than via 
 > > BIOS, but am interested in hearing of any experiences regarding that.
 > 
 > In a very quick test with VirtualBox with 10.3-Release, ZFS, booting 
 > with BIOS and autoboot_delay=0, it takes 15 seconds to display 
 > ÿÿBooting.
 > 
 > With 11.0-R and BIOS it takes about 12.
 > 
 > With 11.0-R and EFI enabled, it takes less than 3 seconds.
 > 
 > On real hardware other factors will likely diminish the difference.

Thanks for that, Stefan.  I only have older kit here, so was curious.

And Slawa Olhovchenkov wrote:

 > Some BIOS start with very long try UEFI boot atempt and try legacy
 > boot only all of that fails.
 >
 > I.e. this is not speedup FreeBSD boot, this is speedup _start_ of
 > FreeBSD boot for some BIOS.

That makes good sense to me.

cheers, Ian
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Slawa Olhovchenkov]

On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 05:12:13PM +1100, Ian Smith wrote:

> On Fri, 16 Dec 2016 18:08:34 +0100, Fernando Herrero Carrón wrote:
>  > Hi everyone,
> 
> Hi,
> 
> you've had plenty of helpful responses, but nobody has commented on:
> 
>  > My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot, 
>  > everything is working fine otherwise.
> 
> I'm skeptical that UEFI boot would be any or noticeably faster than via 
> BIOS, but am interested in hearing of any experiences regarding that.

Some BIOS start with very long try UEFI boot atempt and try legacy
boot only all of that fails.

I.e. this is not speedup FreeBSD boot, this is speedup _start_ of
FreeBSD boot for some BIOS.
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Stefan Bethke]

> Am 17.12.2016 um 07:12 schrieb Ian Smith :
> 
> On Fri, 16 Dec 2016 18:08:34 +0100, Fernando Herrero Carrón wrote:
>> My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot, 
>> everything is working fine otherwise.
> 
> I'm skeptical that UEFI boot would be any or noticeably faster than via 
> BIOS, but am interested in hearing of any experiences regarding that.

In a very quick test with VirtualBox with 10.3-Release, ZFS, booting with BIOS 
and autoboot_delay=0, it takes 15 seconds to display „Booting…“.

With 11.0-R and BIOS it takes about 12.

With 11.0-R and EFI enabled, it takes less than 3 seconds.

On real hardware other factors will likely diminish the difference.


Stefan

-- 
Stefan Bethke    Fon +49 151 14070811




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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Fernando Herrero Carrón]

2016-12-17 9:21 GMT+01:00 Fernando Herrero Carrón :

>
>
> 2016-12-16 23:56 GMT+01:00 Warner Losh :
>
>> On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 11:00 AM, Dimitry Andric  wrote:
>> > On 16 Dec 2016, at 18:53, Antony Uspensky  wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On Fri, 16 Dec 2016, Eric van Gyzen wrote:
>> >>> On 12/16/2016 11:39, Slawa Olhovchenkov wrote:
>>  On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 06:08:34PM +0100, Fernando Herrero Carr?n
>> wrote:
>> > Hi everyone,
>> >
>> > A few months ago I got myself a new box and I have been happily
>> running
>> > FreeBSD on it ever since. I noticed that the boot was not as fast
>> as I had
>> > expected and I've realized that, while my disk is GPT partitioned,
>> the boot
>> > process is still BIOS based:
>> >
>> > % gpart show
>> > =>   34  976773101 <976%2077%2031%2001>  ada0  GPT  (466G)
>> > 34  6- free -  (3.0K)
>> > 40   1024 1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
>> >   1064984- free -  (492K)
>> >   2048   67108864 2  freebsd-swap  (32G)
>> >   67110912  909662208 3  freebsd-zfs  (434G)
>> >  976773120 <976%2077%2031%2020> 15- free -  (7.5K)
>> > ...
>> >> I would shrink ada0p1 down to 128K (size of gptzfsboot = 88K now) and
>> place efi partition (~800K) on free space between new p1 and p2. No need to
>> touch swap partition.
>> >
>> > Yes, this is almost exactly what I have done on a machine that was
>> > originally installed with gptzfsboot on the first partition, which was
>> > 512K.  Since all the partitions on this SSD were aligned to 1M, I
>> > reduced the size of the first partition to 224K, freeing up a hole of
>> > exactly 800K for an EFI partition:
>> >
>> > =>   40  976773088  ada0  GPT  (466G)
>> >  40   2008- free -  (1.0M)
>> >2048448 1  freebsd-boot  (224K)
>> >2496   1600 4  efi  (800K)
>> >4096   33554432 2  freebsd-swap  (16G)
>> >33558528  943214592 <943%2021%2045%2092> 3  freebsd-zfs  (450G)
>> >   976773120 <976%2077%2031%2020>  8- free -  (4.0K)
>> >
>> > Then I wrote the preformatted boot1.efifat image to it, using: gpart
>> > bootcode -p /boot/boot1.efifat -i 4 ada0.  You can also use dd of
>> > course, but I prefer using gpart for these kinds of manipulations.
>> >
>> > This way, you can choose between booting in old school BIOS mode, or
>> > UEFI mode.  If the UEFI mode works flawlessly, you can always decide
>> > later to dump the freebsd-boot partition, and use only an EFI partition.
>> >
>> > -Dimitry
>> >
>> > P.S.: The only thing that triggers my OCD here is that the EFI partition
>> > has index 4, but is physically the second.  But I can live with that,
>> > until I finally delete the freebsd-boot partition. :)
>>
>>
>> You likely want to carve out more like 50MB instead of 800k for UEFI
>> partition. 800k is the minimum, but it also precludes many things you
>> may need to do with UEFI applications down the line.
>>
>> Warner
>>
>
> Thanks guys for all the answers,  I think I will just nuke freebsd-boot
> and create a smallish efi where I can place boot1.efifat as suggested by
> Dimitry. If this works, I can always shrink swap if I really need to later
> on.
>
>
So, it worked!

I took a spare USB stick with a bootonly image and changed partitions there
first. Once I had it working I modified my hard drive's partitions,
installed efifat image with gpart, rebooted, and here I am.

Some conclusions:

* While getting to FreeBSD's loader seems a bit faster (or maybe that's
just confirmation bias), bringing up the system does not seem much faster.
* If anything, I have a slightly higher resolution console now.
* uefi(8) hints at gpart:
 /boot/boot1.efifat
   msdosfs(5) FAT file system image containing boot1.efi for
   use by bsdinstall(8) and the bootcode argument to
gpart(8).
   maybe a little example would help (gpart bootcode -p /boot/boot1.efifat
-i 1 ada0)
* Despite gpart(8)'s excellent BOOTSTRAPPING section, no mention is made to
booting from an efi partition there.

Best,
Fernando
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Fernando Herrero Carrón]

2016-12-17 7:12 GMT+01:00 Ian Smith :

> On Fri, 16 Dec 2016 18:08:34 +0100, Fernando Herrero Carrón wrote:
>  > Hi everyone,
>
> Hi,
>
> you've had plenty of helpful responses, but nobody has commented on:
>
>  > My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot,
>  > everything is working fine otherwise.
>
> I'm skeptical that UEFI boot would be any or noticeably faster than via
> BIOS, but am interested in hearing of any experiences regarding that.
>
> cheers, Ian
>

My understanding is that BIOSes still boot through kind of a legacy 32-bit
path and UEFI boots straight 64-bit with all the bells and whistles. In
fact:

% file /boot/loader
/boot/loader: FreeBSD/i386 demand paged executable
# Slow 32bit?


% file /boot/loader.efi
/boot/loader.efi: PE32+ executable (EFI application) x86-64, for MS Windows
# Fast 64bit?

Whether this amounts to faster boot, we'll see.

Cheers,
Fernando
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Fernando Herrero Carrón]

2016-12-16 23:56 GMT+01:00 Warner Losh :

> On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 11:00 AM, Dimitry Andric  wrote:
> > On 16 Dec 2016, at 18:53, Antony Uspensky  wrote:
> >>
> >> On Fri, 16 Dec 2016, Eric van Gyzen wrote:
> >>> On 12/16/2016 11:39, Slawa Olhovchenkov wrote:
>  On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 06:08:34PM +0100, Fernando Herrero Carr?n
> wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > A few months ago I got myself a new box and I have been happily
> running
> > FreeBSD on it ever since. I noticed that the boot was not as fast as
> I had
> > expected and I've realized that, while my disk is GPT partitioned,
> the boot
> > process is still BIOS based:
> >
> > % gpart show
> > =>   34  976773101  ada0  GPT  (466G)
> > 34  6- free -  (3.0K)
> > 40   1024 1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
> >   1064984- free -  (492K)
> >   2048   67108864 2  freebsd-swap  (32G)
> >   67110912  909662208 3  freebsd-zfs  (434G)
> >  976773120 15- free -  (7.5K)
> > ...
> >> I would shrink ada0p1 down to 128K (size of gptzfsboot = 88K now) and
> place efi partition (~800K) on free space between new p1 and p2. No need to
> touch swap partition.
> >
> > Yes, this is almost exactly what I have done on a machine that was
> > originally installed with gptzfsboot on the first partition, which was
> > 512K.  Since all the partitions on this SSD were aligned to 1M, I
> > reduced the size of the first partition to 224K, freeing up a hole of
> > exactly 800K for an EFI partition:
> >
> > =>   40  976773088  ada0  GPT  (466G)
> >  40   2008- free -  (1.0M)
> >2048448 1  freebsd-boot  (224K)
> >2496   1600 4  efi  (800K)
> >4096   33554432 2  freebsd-swap  (16G)
> >33558528  943214592 3  freebsd-zfs  (450G)
> >   976773120  8- free -  (4.0K)
> >
> > Then I wrote the preformatted boot1.efifat image to it, using: gpart
> > bootcode -p /boot/boot1.efifat -i 4 ada0.  You can also use dd of
> > course, but I prefer using gpart for these kinds of manipulations.
> >
> > This way, you can choose between booting in old school BIOS mode, or
> > UEFI mode.  If the UEFI mode works flawlessly, you can always decide
> > later to dump the freebsd-boot partition, and use only an EFI partition.
> >
> > -Dimitry
> >
> > P.S.: The only thing that triggers my OCD here is that the EFI partition
> > has index 4, but is physically the second.  But I can live with that,
> > until I finally delete the freebsd-boot partition. :)
>
>
> You likely want to carve out more like 50MB instead of 800k for UEFI
> partition. 800k is the minimum, but it also precludes many things you
> may need to do with UEFI applications down the line.
>
> Warner
>

Thanks guys for all the answers,  I think I will just nuke freebsd-boot and
create a smallish efi where I can place boot1.efifat as suggested by
Dimitry. If this works, I can always shrink swap if I really need to later
on.

Just out of curiosity, what other functionality will UEFI provide that
takes up 50M?

Best regards,
Fernando
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Ian Smith]

On Fri, 16 Dec 2016 18:08:34 +0100, Fernando Herrero Carrón wrote:
 > Hi everyone,

Hi,

you've had plenty of helpful responses, but nobody has commented on:

 > My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot, 
 > everything is working fine otherwise.

I'm skeptical that UEFI boot would be any or noticeably faster than via 
BIOS, but am interested in hearing of any experiences regarding that.

cheers, Ian
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Warner Losh]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 11:00 AM, Dimitry Andric  wrote:
> On 16 Dec 2016, at 18:53, Antony Uspensky  wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 16 Dec 2016, Eric van Gyzen wrote:
>>> On 12/16/2016 11:39, Slawa Olhovchenkov wrote:
 On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 06:08:34PM +0100, Fernando Herrero Carr?n wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> A few months ago I got myself a new box and I have been happily running
> FreeBSD on it ever since. I noticed that the boot was not as fast as I had
> expected and I've realized that, while my disk is GPT partitioned, the 
> boot
> process is still BIOS based:
>
> % gpart show
> =>   34  976773101  ada0  GPT  (466G)
> 34  6- free -  (3.0K)
> 40   1024 1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
>   1064984- free -  (492K)
>   2048   67108864 2  freebsd-swap  (32G)
>   67110912  909662208 3  freebsd-zfs  (434G)
>  976773120 15- free -  (7.5K)
> ...
>> I would shrink ada0p1 down to 128K (size of gptzfsboot = 88K now) and place 
>> efi partition (~800K) on free space between new p1 and p2. No need to touch 
>> swap partition.
>
> Yes, this is almost exactly what I have done on a machine that was
> originally installed with gptzfsboot on the first partition, which was
> 512K.  Since all the partitions on this SSD were aligned to 1M, I
> reduced the size of the first partition to 224K, freeing up a hole of
> exactly 800K for an EFI partition:
>
> =>   40  976773088  ada0  GPT  (466G)
>  40   2008- free -  (1.0M)
>2048448 1  freebsd-boot  (224K)
>2496   1600 4  efi  (800K)
>4096   33554432 2  freebsd-swap  (16G)
>33558528  943214592 3  freebsd-zfs  (450G)
>   976773120  8- free -  (4.0K)
>
> Then I wrote the preformatted boot1.efifat image to it, using: gpart
> bootcode -p /boot/boot1.efifat -i 4 ada0.  You can also use dd of
> course, but I prefer using gpart for these kinds of manipulations.
>
> This way, you can choose between booting in old school BIOS mode, or
> UEFI mode.  If the UEFI mode works flawlessly, you can always decide
> later to dump the freebsd-boot partition, and use only an EFI partition.
>
> -Dimitry
>
> P.S.: The only thing that triggers my OCD here is that the EFI partition
> has index 4, but is physically the second.  But I can live with that,
> until I finally delete the freebsd-boot partition. :)


You likely want to carve out more like 50MB instead of 800k for UEFI
partition. 800k is the minimum, but it also precludes many things you
may need to do with UEFI applications down the line.

Warner
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Dimitry Andric]

On 16 Dec 2016, at 18:53, Antony Uspensky  wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 16 Dec 2016, Eric van Gyzen wrote:
>> On 12/16/2016 11:39, Slawa Olhovchenkov wrote:
>>> On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 06:08:34PM +0100, Fernando Herrero Carr?n wrote:
 Hi everyone,
 
 A few months ago I got myself a new box and I have been happily running
 FreeBSD on it ever since. I noticed that the boot was not as fast as I had
 expected and I've realized that, while my disk is GPT partitioned, the boot
 process is still BIOS based:
 
 % gpart show
 =>   34  976773101  ada0  GPT  (466G)
 34  6- free -  (3.0K)
 40   1024 1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
   1064984- free -  (492K)
   2048   67108864 2  freebsd-swap  (32G)
   67110912  909662208 3  freebsd-zfs  (434G)
  976773120 15- free -  (7.5K)
...
> I would shrink ada0p1 down to 128K (size of gptzfsboot = 88K now) and place 
> efi partition (~800K) on free space between new p1 and p2. No need to touch 
> swap partition.

Yes, this is almost exactly what I have done on a machine that was
originally installed with gptzfsboot on the first partition, which was
512K.  Since all the partitions on this SSD were aligned to 1M, I
reduced the size of the first partition to 224K, freeing up a hole of
exactly 800K for an EFI partition:

=>   40  976773088  ada0  GPT  (466G)
 40   2008- free -  (1.0M)
   2048448 1  freebsd-boot  (224K)
   2496   1600 4  efi  (800K)
   4096   33554432 2  freebsd-swap  (16G)
   33558528  943214592 3  freebsd-zfs  (450G)
  976773120  8- free -  (4.0K)

Then I wrote the preformatted boot1.efifat image to it, using: gpart
bootcode -p /boot/boot1.efifat -i 4 ada0.  You can also use dd of
course, but I prefer using gpart for these kinds of manipulations.

This way, you can choose between booting in old school BIOS mode, or
UEFI mode.  If the UEFI mode works flawlessly, you can always decide
later to dump the freebsd-boot partition, and use only an EFI partition.

-Dimitry

P.S.: The only thing that triggers my OCD here is that the EFI partition
has index 4, but is physically the second.  But I can live with that,
until I finally delete the freebsd-boot partition. :)



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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Antony Uspensky]

On Fri, 16 Dec 2016, Eric van Gyzen wrote:


On 12/16/2016 11:39, Slawa Olhovchenkov wrote:

On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 06:08:34PM +0100, Fernando Herrero Carr?n wrote:


Hi everyone,

A few months ago I got myself a new box and I have been happily running
FreeBSD on it ever since. I noticed that the boot was not as fast as I had
expected and I've realized that, while my disk is GPT partitioned, the boot
process is still BIOS based:

% gpart show
=>   34  976773101  ada0  GPT  (466G)
 34  6- free -  (3.0K)
 40   1024 1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
   1064984- free -  (492K)
   2048   67108864 2  freebsd-swap  (32G)
   67110912  909662208 3  freebsd-zfs  (434G)
  976773120 15- free -  (7.5K)

I am reading uefi(8) and it looks like FreeBSD 11 should be able to boot
using UEFI straight into ZFS, so I am thinking of converting that
freebsd-boot partition to an EFI partition, creating a FAT filesystem and
copying /boot/boot.efi there.

How good of an idea is that? Would it really be that simple or am I missing
something? My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot,
everything is working fine otherwise.

Thanks in advance for your help.


I am also interesting by this case.
I think expand freebsd-boot to about 1M (size of /boot/boot1.efifat),
dding /boot/boot1.efifat and set to type to 'efi' may be enough. I am
never tried this.


I expect that would work.  It's slightly risky, though, since it doesn't let you
fall back to BIOS boot if EFI doesn't work.

Eric


I would shrink ada0p1 down to 128K (size of gptzfsboot = 88K now) and 
place efi partition (~800K) on free space between new p1 and p2. No need 
to touch swap partition.

A.
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Slawa Olhovchenkov]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 11:43:18AM -0600, Eric van Gyzen wrote:

> On 12/16/2016 11:39, Slawa Olhovchenkov wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 06:08:34PM +0100, Fernando Herrero Carrón wrote:
> > 
> >> Hi everyone,
> >>
> >> A few months ago I got myself a new box and I have been happily running
> >> FreeBSD on it ever since. I noticed that the boot was not as fast as I had
> >> expected and I've realized that, while my disk is GPT partitioned, the boot
> >> process is still BIOS based:
> >>
> >> % gpart show
> >> =>   34  976773101  ada0  GPT  (466G)
> >>  34  6- free -  (3.0K)
> >>  40   1024 1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
> >>1064984- free -  (492K)
> >>2048   67108864 2  freebsd-swap  (32G)
> >>67110912  909662208 3  freebsd-zfs  (434G)
> >>   976773120 15- free -  (7.5K)
> >>
> >> I am reading uefi(8) and it looks like FreeBSD 11 should be able to boot
> >> using UEFI straight into ZFS, so I am thinking of converting that
> >> freebsd-boot partition to an EFI partition, creating a FAT filesystem and
> >> copying /boot/boot.efi there.
> >>
> >> How good of an idea is that? Would it really be that simple or am I missing
> >> something? My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot,
> >> everything is working fine otherwise.
> >>
> >> Thanks in advance for your help.
> > 
> > I am also interesting by this case.
> > I think expand freebsd-boot to about 1M (size of /boot/boot1.efifat),
> > dding /boot/boot1.efifat and set to type to 'efi' may be enough. I am
> > never tried this.
> 
> I expect that would work.  It's slightly risky, though, since it doesn't let 
> you
> fall back to BIOS boot if EFI doesn't work.

Live cd/USB can be fallback for this case.
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Eric van Gyzen]

On 12/16/2016 11:39, Slawa Olhovchenkov wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 06:08:34PM +0100, Fernando Herrero Carrón wrote:
> 
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> A few months ago I got myself a new box and I have been happily running
>> FreeBSD on it ever since. I noticed that the boot was not as fast as I had
>> expected and I've realized that, while my disk is GPT partitioned, the boot
>> process is still BIOS based:
>>
>> % gpart show
>> =>   34  976773101  ada0  GPT  (466G)
>>  34  6- free -  (3.0K)
>>  40   1024 1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
>>1064984- free -  (492K)
>>2048   67108864 2  freebsd-swap  (32G)
>>67110912  909662208 3  freebsd-zfs  (434G)
>>   976773120 15- free -  (7.5K)
>>
>> I am reading uefi(8) and it looks like FreeBSD 11 should be able to boot
>> using UEFI straight into ZFS, so I am thinking of converting that
>> freebsd-boot partition to an EFI partition, creating a FAT filesystem and
>> copying /boot/boot.efi there.
>>
>> How good of an idea is that? Would it really be that simple or am I missing
>> something? My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot,
>> everything is working fine otherwise.
>>
>> Thanks in advance for your help.
> 
> I am also interesting by this case.
> I think expand freebsd-boot to about 1M (size of /boot/boot1.efifat),
> dding /boot/boot1.efifat and set to type to 'efi' may be enough. I am
> never tried this.

I expect that would work.  It's slightly risky, though, since it doesn't let you
fall back to BIOS boot if EFI doesn't work.

Eric
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Slawa Olhovchenkov]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 06:08:34PM +0100, Fernando Herrero Carrón wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> A few months ago I got myself a new box and I have been happily running
> FreeBSD on it ever since. I noticed that the boot was not as fast as I had
> expected and I've realized that, while my disk is GPT partitioned, the boot
> process is still BIOS based:
> 
> % gpart show
> =>   34  976773101  ada0  GPT  (466G)
>  34  6- free -  (3.0K)
>  40   1024 1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
>1064984- free -  (492K)
>2048   67108864 2  freebsd-swap  (32G)
>67110912  909662208 3  freebsd-zfs  (434G)
>   976773120 15- free -  (7.5K)
> 
> I am reading uefi(8) and it looks like FreeBSD 11 should be able to boot
> using UEFI straight into ZFS, so I am thinking of converting that
> freebsd-boot partition to an EFI partition, creating a FAT filesystem and
> copying /boot/boot.efi there.
> 
> How good of an idea is that? Would it really be that simple or am I missing
> something? My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot,
> everything is working fine otherwise.
> 
> Thanks in advance for your help.

I am also interesting by this case.
I think expand freebsd-boot to about 1M (size of /boot/boot1.efifat),
dding /boot/boot1.efifat and set to type to 'efi' may be enough. I am
never tried this.
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Re: Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

[Eric van Gyzen]

On 12/16/2016 11:08, Fernando Herrero Carrón wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> A few months ago I got myself a new box and I have been happily running
> FreeBSD on it ever since. I noticed that the boot was not as fast as I had
> expected and I've realized that, while my disk is GPT partitioned, the boot
> process is still BIOS based:
> 
> % gpart show
> =>   34  976773101  ada0  GPT  (466G)
>  34  6- free -  (3.0K)
>  40   1024 1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
>1064984- free -  (492K)
>2048   67108864 2  freebsd-swap  (32G)
>67110912  909662208 3  freebsd-zfs  (434G)
>   976773120 15- free -  (7.5K)
> 
> I am reading uefi(8) and it looks like FreeBSD 11 should be able to boot
> using UEFI straight into ZFS, so I am thinking of converting that
> freebsd-boot partition to an EFI partition, creating a FAT filesystem and
> copying /boot/boot.efi there.
> 
> How good of an idea is that? Would it really be that simple or am I missing
> something? My only reason for wanting to boot with UEFI is faster boot,
> everything is working fine otherwise.

I would recommend creating another partition for EFI instead of replacing your
freebsd-boot partition, in order to have a working fallback in case EFI boot
doesn't work.  You would need to steal some space from your swap partition.

Otherwise, it's a good idea, and it really is that simple.  I did exactly that
when I updated a machine to 11 and switched to EFI.

$ gpart show ada0
=>   34  500118125  ada0  GPT  (238G)
 34  6- free -  (3.0K)
 40   1024 1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
   1064   1600 2  efi  (800K)
   2664   10485144 4  freebsd-swap  (5.0G)
   10487808  489629696 3  freebsd-zfs  (233G)
  500117504655- free -  (328K)

$ sysctl machdep.bootmethod
machdep.bootmethod: UEFI

Eric
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