Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:54:25 +0200 From: "John Alex." <alexoz66@gmail.com> To: kpneal@pobox.com Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Installing FreeBSD 9.1 amd64 on IBM x3550 M3 Message-ID: <5119F531.7030707@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20130212005913.GA33927@neutralgood.org> References: <20130211112352.GA84742@noc.ntua.gr> <20130211191145.2b96ba8f@X220.ovitrap.com> <51193151.2090204@noc.ntua.gr> <CAN6yY1uxN3Ya2V84nmfKGczDjVNOPvVBwo8Q2O7D_mebq89fxw@mail.gmail.com> <20130212005913.GA33927@neutralgood.org>
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On 02/12/2013 02:59 AM, kpneal@pobox.com wrote: > On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 11:43:55AM -0800, Kevin Oberman wrote: >> On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 9:58 AM, Panagiotis Christias >> <p.christias@noc.ntua.gr> wrote: >>> >>> I suppose trying an 8.3 installation would be the easiest way to use MBR >>> instead of GPT, right; >> >> That would do it, but 9.1 is perfectly happy doing MBR. It's just not >> the default. >> >> Seems like many BIOSes assume that GPT=uEFI. Clearly this is silly, but... >> >> I know Lenovo laptops have this problem and it is VERY annoying. I run >> FreeBSD on a GPT disk on my ThinkPad, but I have booteasy installed on >> an MBR disk (which contains W7) and my BIOS is set to boot from that >> disk.BootEasy then will boot up the GPT disk with FreeBSD. > > Doesn't GPT start with an MBR covering the entire disk? How feasible would > it be to tweak that MBR so that a boot partition was listed in it? Say, a > partition holding the root filesystem could be listed in both the GPT and > MBR style. Then a disk could be booted with MBR or GPT at the whim of the > firmware. > > I agree that this BIOS=MBR/UEFI=GPT assumption is pure rubbish. I've got > machines with this documented restriction and I'd love a way around it. > It is feasible, it's known as a hybrid MBR. On Linux I've accomplished this using the gdisk utility, I don't know how it can be done on FreeBSD though. I had to use this ugly solution in order to install windows 8 on a GPT disk on a pc without UEFI support.
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