From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Sat Feb 24 16:43:50 2018 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2610:1c1:1:606c::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EE5DEF2D5E0 for ; Sat, 24 Feb 2018 16:43:49 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from keve@keve.hu) Received: from mail.siruf.hu (mail.siruf.hu [IPv6:2a01:6ee0:1:1000:4f13:6941:9ad4:300c]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 79D856C124 for ; Sat, 24 Feb 2018 16:43:48 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from keve@keve.hu) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mail.siruf.hu (Postfix) with ESMTP id C20496549 for ; Sat, 24 Feb 2018 17:43:37 +0100 (CET) Received: from mail.siruf.hu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (mail.siruf.hu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id KsKmQ-mGZens for ; Sat, 24 Feb 2018 17:43:35 +0100 (CET) Received: from [IPv6:2a02:a455:c069:1:3d69:ab64:2906:c9ed] (unknown [IPv6:2a02:a455:c069:1:3d69:ab64:2906:c9ed]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) (Authenticated sender: keve@keve.hu) by mail.siruf.hu (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 1B0836222 for ; Sat, 24 Feb 2018 17:43:34 +0100 (CET) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=simple/simple; d=keve.hu; s=mail; t=1519490615; bh=7K93qz/f++Ruau6VOqmVc+4zPdeweqFElKuBx/wAYug=; h=To:From:Subject:Date:From; b=jYNCDswV76WslxTNvZs/It7TZh4wYCjaEwEGX6B7GK77a523aB4KkkD3e01HCub/u pDBiSbl/iFQuBS6lXtE2XoMyso2doD8uTXfibIDqbzr+mwuXha0TFDD7sxuyGPScze 7CVYlRMArvg0LCPY8RctMiokoBB0VJeRBBLBaMcg= To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org From: Keve Subject: ipxe + EFI loading FreeBSD - should/will this work? Message-ID: <45199144-8228-f661-bb2e-5a55861dfe34@keve.hu> Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2018 17:43:31 +0100 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.6.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Language: en-US X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.25 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2018 16:43:50 -0000 Hi, I am booting several different OSes cleanly with ipxe (http://ipxe.org) in both physical as well as virtual environments. The only system resisting so far is FreeBSD. I can easily boot it from iso (e.g. the excellent mfsbsd isos), but this reduces flexibility in giving kernel command line arguments, etc. ipxe can boot multiboot kernels on x86, there are traces of multiboot in FreeBSD, but I have not succeeded in getting it up. ipxe lacks direct support for loading the FreeBSD kernel. With the advent of loader.efi I have tried my luck again - with moderate success. On amd64 I can boot loader.efi as the "kernel" passing kernel command line arguments, but any attempt to pass an initial ramdisk fails. I tried passing no initrd, a small UFS (40MB) with /boot, a small disk image with gpt freebsd-ufs partition (50MB), a big UFS (mfsroot), but I consistently get the same result: * "Found 1 disk(s) but no logical partition" message, "can't load 'kernel'" * lsdev shows only the network card * loader.efi tries to nfs mount / on the tftp-server The whole point of my investigation was to avoid the nfs-root by providing a memory disk. Hence my questions: Am I missing something in my approach above (some parameter to loader.efi that will make it use the memory disk) or some other magic to use the memory disk as the root filesystem? Are you considering to enrich loader.efi to be able to work with an initial ramdisk, if yes, where can I sign up to support the process? Any guidance on how to proceed, what to try is highly appreciated. Thx. Cheers, Keve