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Date:      Wed, 16 Mar 2011 14:44:49 -0700
From:      merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz)
To:        DStaal@usa.net
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Upgrading FreeBSd when using a zfs-only installation?
Message-ID:  <86ipviviy6.fsf@red.stonehenge.com>
In-Reply-To: <aba631748e36b0a7e5b17de1102bd5a8.squirrel@www.magehandbook.com> (Daniel Staal's message of "Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:14:36 -0400")
References:  <21D3DE2D-2C1E-4C7B-860E-C637C746150A@forsythia.net> <86lj0j9cwd.fsf@red.stonehenge.com> <AANLkTin2gSwVE2DeFLq73SE1ef4AYiG37o3hLcnHo54S@mail.gmail.com> <86hbb6aply.fsf@red.stonehenge.com> <78E237A573166F9C62551A78@mac-pro.magehandbook.com> <864o76abzp.fsf@red.stonehenge.com> <86hbb2x68l.fsf@red.stonehenge.com> <aba631748e36b0a7e5b17de1102bd5a8.squirrel@www.magehandbook.com>

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>>>>> "Daniel" == Daniel Staal <DStaal@usa.net> writes:

Daniel> On Wed, March 16, 2011 2:36 pm, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
>> 
Randal> SOMEONE here knows.  Please help.
>> 
>> So, nobody knows?
>> 
>> Most of the other answers were about a source-code upgrade, not a binary
>> upgrade.

Daniel> I thought Matthew Seamans' answer sounded pretty definitive:

>> A system update via freebsd-update or otherwise won't touch whatever
>> bootblocks you have installed.  So if you have already installed
>> gptzfsboot and your system already boots ZFS v12 then it will continue to
>> boot ZFS v12 without your touching anything to do with boot blocks.

But this was absolutely *not* the case with 8.0 to 8.1.  I had tried it
naively in a VM, and thank goodness, because the VM failed to boot.

Then I googled, and found
http://forums.freebsd.org/showpost.php?p=94557&postcount=19 which when I
followed, and it worked fine.

Thus, when I did my "live" 8.0 to 8.1 upgrades, I followed that extra
"gpart bootcode" step, and everything worked fine.

Therefore, Matthew Seaman can't be trusted with his answer.  He
apparently did not boot a ZFS-on-root disk with a freebsd-update from
8.0 to 8.1, or he would not have said what he did.

The question I have is, does anyone know *definitively* if the same
thing that broke 8.0 to 8.1 will also likely occur in 8.1 to 8.2, or
does the bootloader in 8.2 now contain what /boot/gptzfsboot contained
in 8.1? As in, does FreeBSD 8.2 now support *native* ZFS booting, or
will it forever be a kluge?

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>;
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.posterous.com/ for Smalltalk discussion



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