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GPTZFSBOOT(8) FreeBSD System Manager's Manual GPTZFSBOOT(8)
NAME
gptzfsboot - GPT bootcode for ZFS on BIOS-based computers
DESCRIPTION
gptzfsboot is used on BIOS-based computers to boot from a filesystem in a
ZFS pool. gptzfsboot is installed in a freebsd-boot partition of a GPT-
partitioned disk with gpart(8).
IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
The GPT standard allows a variable number of partitions, but gptzfsboot
only boots from tables with 128 partitions or less.
BOOTING
gptzfsboot tries to find all ZFS pools that are composed of BIOS-visible
hard disks or partitions on them. gptzfsboot looks for ZFS device labels
on all visible disks and in discovered supported partitions for all
supported partition scheme types. The search starts with the disk from
which gptzfsboot itself was loaded. Other disks are probed in BIOS
defined order. After a disk is probed and gptzfsboot determines that the
whole disk is not a ZFS pool member, the individual partitions are probed
in their partition table order. Currently GPT and MBR partition schemes
are supported. With the GPT scheme, only partitions of type freebsd-zfs
are probed. The first pool seen during probing is used as a default boot
pool.
The filesystem specified by the bootfs property of the pool is used as a
default boot filesystem. If the bootfs property is not set, then the
root filesystem of the pool is used as the default. loader(8) is loaded
from the boot filesystem. If /boot.config or /boot/config is present in
the boot filesystem, boot options are read from it in the same way as
boot(8).
The ZFS GUIDs of the first successfully probed device and the first
detected pool are made available to loader(8) in the
vfs.zfs.boot.primary_vdev and vfs.zfs.boot.primary_pool variables.
USAGE
Normally gptzfsboot will boot in fully automatic mode. However, like
boot(8), it is possible to interrupt the automatic boot process and
interact with gptzfsboot through a prompt. gptzfsboot accepts all the
options that boot(8) supports.
The filesystem specification and the path to loader(8) are different from
boot(8). The format is
[zfs:pool/filesystem:][/path/to/loader]
Both the filesystem and the path can be specified. If only a path is
specified, then the default filesystem is used. If only a pool and
filesystem are specified, then /boot/loader is used as a path.
Additionally, the status command can be used to query information about
discovered pools. The output format is similar to that of zpool status
(see zpool(8)).
The configured or automatically determined ZFS boot filesystem is stored
in the loader(8) loaddev variable, and also set as the initial value of
EXAMPLES
gptzfsboot is typically installed in combination with a "protective MBR"
(see gpart(8)). To install gptzfsboot on the ada0 drive:
gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ada0
gptzfsboot can also be installed without the PMBR:
gpart bootcode -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ada0
SEE ALSO
boot.config(5), boot(8), gpart(8), loader(8), zpool(8)
HISTORY
gptzfsboot appeared in FreeBSD 7.3.
AUTHORS
This manual page was written by Andriy Gapon <avg@FreeBSD.org>.
BUGS
gptzfsboot looks for ZFS meta-data only in MBR partitions (known on
FreeBSD as slices). It does not look into BSD disklabel(8) partitions
that are traditionally called partitions. If a disklabel partition
happens to be placed so that ZFS meta-data can be found at the fixed
offsets relative to a slice, then gptzfsboot will recognize the partition
as a part of a ZFS pool, but this is not guaranteed to happen.
FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE September 15, 2014 FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE