freebsd stable - Dec 2016 - Upgrading boot from GPT(BIOS) to GPT(UEFI)

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)
>>>        1064        984        - 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.

On 16 Dec 2016, at 18:53, Antony Uspensky <uspensky at x-art.ru>
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)
>>>>       1064        984        - 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)
       2048        448     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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