BE Loader Menu (was Re: rcs)

From: Teske, Devin <Devin.Teske_at_fisglobal.com>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2013 17:05:15 +0000

On Oct 9, 2013, at 9:42 AM, Kris Moore wrote:

> On 10/09/2013 12:33, Allan Jude wrote:
>> On 2013-10-09 12:23, Freddie Cash wrote:
>>> On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 9:12 AM, Freddie Cash <fjwcash_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 6:41 AM, Julian Elischer <julian_at_freebsd.org>wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> On 10/9/13 2:35 AM, Freddie Cash wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Alfred Perlstein <bright_at_mu.org> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> You're right on the money, to be honest this is one of the reasons why
>>>>>>> I've switched to using OSX as my desktop OS.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> zsh, vim, screen by default.  and upgrades work.  At the end of the day
>>>>>>> I'm spending time doing work, not mucking about my workspace to make it
>>>>>>> usable for development.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I think this was brought up at BSDCan in the discussion about making
>>>>>>> FreeBSD a more featured development platform.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Speaking of... has anyone tried PCBSD?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> PC-BSD isn't much different from FreeBSD.  The installer is GUI and
>>>>>> support
>>>>>> ZFS, there are some GUI setup tools on first boot for X, there are some
>>>>>> GUI
>>>>>> tools to select binary drivers for X, and there ​​are working pkgng repos
>>>>>> available.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I had a lot of issues with PC-BSD 9.0 and 9.1 as I was trying to do
>>>>>> things
>>>>>> "the FreeBSD way" which broke a lot of things that were done "the PC-BSD
>>>>>> way" (aka don't manually edit config files used for booting).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> ​Switching to the "rolling-release" (aka PC-BSD 9-STABLE) and moving all
>>>>>> my
>>>>>> config file edits into <filename>.conf.local fixed my issues.  Things
>>>>>> have
>>>>>> been running smooth, and I finally understand the beauty and simplicity
>>>>>> of
>>>>>> freebsd-update + pkg.  OS gets updated once per month, packages get
>>>>>> updated
>>>>>> twice per month, no more compiling things from source.  It's like using
>>>>>> Ubuntu/Debian but with the power and features of FreeBSD.  :)
>>>>>> ​
>>>>>> 
>>>>> When they went to a ZFS-only system, using GRUB, with no alternative,
>>>>> then I'm afraid they lost me.
>>>>> I want a root filesystem on UFS for reliabailty and simpleness.  I can
>>>>> debug it's media if needed.
>>>>> Before then I really liked it (though ther eis not enough information on
>>>>> how it works interneally if you want to use it.
>>>>> hopefully that will come.. and I LIKE PBIs  FreeBSD should adopt PBIs for
>>>>> sure.
>>>>> With PBIs you could make even quite base items separately installable.
>>>>> versioning problems go away.
>>>>> 
>>>> There's no GRUB in a default install of PC-BSD 9.0, 9.1, or 9.2.  Even on
>>>> a ZFS-only setup (which is what I run).  It's using the FreeBSD loader,
>>>> with custom artwork and menus.
>>>> 
>>> ​Hrm, it seems they've changed things with the 9.2 installer.  It does use
>>> GRUB2 (ewwww!) for the boot loader, and integrates support for ZFS boot
>>> environments (via beadm) into it.  :(  Shame they didn't use the BE support
>>> in the FreeBSD loader for this.  Wonder if my 9-STABLE-based PC-BSD install
>>> will get "upgraded" to GRUB?
>>> 
>> The reason they went to grub2, is that the way the freebsd loader menus
>> work, it loads the kernel before it draws the menu. This means if there
>> is a problem with your kernel (probably the most valuable time to have
>> boot environments) then the menu never comes up, and you cannot select
>> which BE to boot from. Grub doesn't rely on a FreeBSD kernel until after
>> you select which BE to boot from.
>> 
>> Kris and I discussed it at length with Devin Teske, and while he has
>> demonstrated being able to populate a lower menu with the ZFS datasets,
>> I am not sure if the other issue can be resolved.
>> 
> 

I'm late to the party again ;D (didn't realize the rcs thread had turned BE)

Both problems can be solved.
The loading of the kernel *after* choosing your boot device is trivial.
We've been doing it at $work for *years* (almost a decade?)

I can put that in, whenever. Probably at the same time as implementing
the live/dynamic BE menus for selecting the root device.



> Yea, GRUB is not my first choice, but ATM this is the "cleanest" way we
> can do ZFS BE's. However if you don't like ZFS / GRUB, you can always
> use regular FreeBSD and just grab our toolchain from
> sysutils/pcbsd-utils* in ports or use our PKGNG repo:
> 
> http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/Turn_FreeBSD_into_PC-BSD%C2%AE

> 
> I'm planning on using GRUB to do UEFI booting for 10.0 as well. But when
> the FreeBSD loader matures to the point of having support for all these
> features, I'll gladly move us back.
> 

I had not been pushing hard on finishing the BE Forth because I knew that
it would be a greater value add if we actually had "Boot from ZFS" finished
first. Would be easier to test, that is, if I actually had a system booting from
ZFS -- which is what Allan, jmg, and myself are hopefully working toward
for FreeBSD 10.0-R. (smiles)
-- 
Devin

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Received on Wed Oct 09 2013 - 15:05:22 UTC

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