Re: ZFSROOT UEFI boot

On 2016-01-24 07:53, Tomoaki AOKI wrote:
> Unfortunately, this (and its committed successor and original for UFS)
> fails to boot in some situation, like below. OTOH, gptzfsboot (and
> maybe gptboot for UFS, too) is OK.
> 
> When I select Disk1 from UEFI firmware, bootx64.efi in Disk1 EFI
> partition is used and it searches /boot/loader.efi from Disk2 (in ZFS,
> if none, in UFS) only.
> And when I select Disk2, bootx64.efi in Disk2 EFI partition is used and
> it searches /boot/loader.efi from Disk1 only.
> 
> 
> In fact, this is a long-standing and living problem.
> At past, USB memstick with head memstick.img (UEFI enabled, but
> without root-on-ZFS support) booted fine, but after I added UFS2
> partition in internal disk, the USB memstick didn't boot anymore.
> It searches /boot/loader.efi from internal UFS and fails as it was
> blank (only newfs'ed) at that time. Another USB memstick with stable/10
> memstick.img is still fine, as it's still ancient BIOS based.
> 

In the past I have seen this same behaviour when testing UEFI.
I booted from the memstick, and installed the OS. I then used the 'boot
select menu', and selected the hard drive, and it booted the system from
the USB memstick. If I rebooted and selected the memstick, it booted
from the hard drive.

It seemed that altering the intended boot drive always caused the
opposite of the desired behaviour.

> Possibly, it's not a fault of boot1.efi but caused by differense in
> implementation of UEFI firmware. If that's it, different boot1.efi
> would be needed for each implementation.
> 
> A bit more details of tests are as below. Not all combinations are
> covered, but would be sufficient to determine above conclusion.
> 
> 
> Common configurations for all tests:
>   *Each disk has one EFI partition (p1), one freebsd-boot partition
>    (p2), one swap partition (p3), one UFS partition (p4), and one
>    ZFS pool (p5) with this order.
> 
>   *Each partition has different GEOM label.
> 
>   *In each disk, FreeBSD is installed as root on ZFS. No other OS.
> 
>   *stable/10 (r294614) is installed in Disk1.
> 
>   *head (r294567) is installed in Disk2.
> 
>   *ZFS-enabled boot1.efi (head r294567) is used as bootx64.efi.
> 
> 
> Set 1: Boot from Disk1 (select it in UEFI firmware).
>        In all tests, /boot/loader.efi in Disk1 (both UFS and ZFS)
>        are NOT searched at all.
> 
>  1-1) Both UFS and ZFS has no /boot/loader.efi
>         -> Fail to boot. Fall back to boot1 prompt.
> 
>  1-2) Disk2 UFS only has /boot/loader.efi, whole /boot of Disk2 ZFS
>       is copied to UFS.
>         -> head in Disk2 boots fine.
> 
>  1-3) Same as 1-2, except its /boot/loader.efi is overwritten by the
>       one of stable/10.
>         -> head in Disk2 boots fine, as loader.efi loads kernel from
>            /boot/kernel/kernel in UFS and kernel with zfs.ko can mount
>            root on ZFS specified by vfs.root.mountfrom.
> 
>  1-4) Disk2 UFS only has /boot/loader.efi, whole /boot of Disk1 ZFS
>       is copied to UFS and its /boot/loader.efi is overwritten by
>       the one of head.
>         -> stable/10 in Disk1 ZFS boots fine.
> 
>  1-5) Disk2 ZFS only has /boot/loader.efi.
>         -> head in Disk2 ZFS boots fine.
> 
>  1-6) Both UFS and ZFS in Disk2 has /boot/loader.efi.
>       (Mix of 1-4 and 1-5)
>         -> head in Disk2 ZFS boots fine.
> 
> 
> Set 2: Boot from Disk2 (select it in UEFI firmware).
>        In all tests, /boot/loader.efi in Disk2 (both UFS and ZFS)
>        are NOT searched at all.
> 
>  2-1) Both UFS and ZFS has no /boot/loader.efi
>         -> Fail to boot. Fall back to boot1 prompt.
>            ZFS pool in Disk2 is shown before one in Disk1.
> 
>  2-2) Disk1 UFS only has /boot/loader.efi, whole /boot of Disk2 ZFS
>       is copied to UFS.
>         -> head in Disk2 ZFS boots fine.
> 
>  2-3) Disk1 UFS only has /boot/loader.efi, whole /boot of Disk1 ZFS
>       is copied to UFS.
>         -> stable/10 in Disk1 ZFS boots fine, as loader.efi loads
>            kernel from /boot/kernel/kernel in UFS and kernel with zfs.ko
>            can mount root on ZFS specified by vfs.root.mountfrom.
> 
>  2-4) Disk1 UFS only has /boot/loader.efi, whole /boot of Disk1 ZFS
>       is copied to UFS and its /boot/loader.efi is overwritten by
>       the one of head.
>         -> stable/10 in Disk1 ZFS boots fine.
> 
>  2-5) Disk1 ZFS only has /boot/loader.efi of stable/10 itself.
>         -> Fail to boot. Fall back to boot1 prompt.
>            ZFS pool in Disk2 is shown before one in Disk1.
> 
>  2-6) Disk1 ZFS only has /boot/loader.efi of head.
>         -> stable/10 in Disk1 ZFS boots fine.
> 
>  2-7) Both UFS and ZFS in Disk1 has /boot/loader.efi of head.
>       (Mix of 2-2 and 2-6)
>         -> stable/10 in Disk1 ZFS boots fine.
> 
>  2-8) UFS has /boot/loader.efi of head (head kernel copied), but ZFS
>       has /boot/loader.efi of stable/10 itself. (Mix of 2-2 and 2-5)
>         -> Same as 2-5. Fail to boot. Fall back to boot1 prompt.
>            ZFS pool in Disk2 is shown before one in Disk1.
> 
> Set 3: Disk2 is removed. (Disk1 only environment)
> 
>   3-1) ZFS only has /boot/loader.efi of head.
>         -> stable/10 in Disk1 ZFS boots fine.
> 
>   3-2) Same as 2-2 without Disk2.
>         -> Fail to boot. Fall back to loader prompt.
>            (Of course. Specified root device doesn't exists.)
> 
>   3-3) Same as 2-4 without Disk2.
>         -> stable/10 in Disk1 ZFS boots fine.
> 
>   3-4) Both UFS and ZFS have /boot/loader.efi of head.
>         -> stable/10 in Disk1 ZFS boots fine.
> 
> 
> Regards.
> 
> 


-- 
Allan Jude