Then you misunderstood it. You're only bound to MBR IF you want to use boot0cfg(8).
Or if existing OS uses MBR and it is to be preserved.
Then you misunderstood it. You're only bound to MBR IF you want to use boot0cfg(8).
That goes without saying.Or if existing OS uses MBR and it is to be preserved.
Yeah, try preparing the partition so that the FreeBSD installer finds it and offers it to you on a silver platter.
That's the hard part, it requires you to keep track of how many GB of disk space Windows has, dedicate the rest of the disk to FreeBSD, keep track of the offsets (that are relative to the Windows partition, BTW), and keep converting between bytes, sectors, and GB, because the installer doesn't always give you nice-looking, easy-to-use numbers.
Just getting the numbers right IS time consuming and difficult. It forced me to learn to plan things out and write my numbers out BEFORE I even get the installation going. That made a HUGE difference in the success of my dual-boot adventures.
That goes without saying.
It does not. It works fine with GPT, both in BIOS and UEFI mode.FreeBSD's boot manager requires MBR
I know about win10's diskmgmt.msc... it was OK stuff, very limited in features. And win11's version left me frustrated, because I could not reliably use it - the utility hangs from time to time, and I suspect that's because I mapped some samba shares to the middle letters of the English alphabet (and those shares are intentionally, by design, not always available, which is OK for my scenario at this time).Seriously? All you need is to let Win (10+ anyway) shrink itself, leaving quite ordinary freespace on the disk.
Sounds like you're recalling some nightmares from older Windows versions (understandable), but I was amazed with how well W10's tools for disk management worked - once you dig deep enough in Control Panel (ono) to find them!
Nothing unusual to keep track of. gpart show -p from the install LiveCD then shows clear contiguous space to select, which the installer offers for single or multiple partitions as usual.
While it's good to have a rough idea how many GB you want in what partitions, there's no need to obsess about fine details, nothing like bsdlabel ...
Next time you're about to wipe a W10+ box to install FreeBSD, hold your nose and try the diskspace tools that balanga detailed early on, before nuking it! <&^}=
Maybe Windows will make an accurate one and ignore the FBSD partition, or maybe not...
Yes. I'd made the same assumptions, independently having arrived at the same method: defrag then shrink Win10 to 'sufficient' size, nowadays straightforward; add a common FAT32 or NTFS partition from W10 if desired; install FreeBSD to a newly created slice as usual, reboot or from LiveCD mode on installer, run boot0cfg to set boot options. Done.
Agreed if it's already MBR, but we're all making perhaps sweeping assumptions until Zagzigger returns to let us know.
Not that exploring options meanwhile is a bad thing ...
This goes to OP too: you can always create a VM and test it there. Many times you can easily switch between UEFI/legacy so you can test things out. And you can keep snapshots in case you do something wrong.I will have to look through my laptop disk collection to see if I have Windows installed on a GPT disk and then see if I can install FreeBSD on it.
What do you mean by FreeBSD's boot manager?It does not. It works fine with GPT, both in BIOS and UEFI mode.
root@:~ # gpart show
=> 34 419430333 nvd0 GPT (200G)
34 2014 - free - (1.0M)
2048 921600 1 ms-recovery (450M)
923648 202752 2 efi (99M)
1126400 32768 3 ms-reserved (16M)
1159168 144900063 4 ms-basic-data (69G)
146059231 104857601 - free - (50G) ; ignore this gap, it was a d:\ drive
250916832 159383552 6 freebsd-ufs (76G)
410300384 8388608 7 freebsd-swap (4.0G)
418688992 741375 - free - (362M)
root@:~ # find /boot/efi
/boot/efi
/boot/efi/EFI
/boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft
/boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft/Boot
/boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/BCD
/boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/BCD.LOG
....
/boot/efi/EFI/Boot
/boot/efi/EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi
/boot/efi/EFI/freebsd
/boot/efi/EFI/freebsd/loader.efi
root@:~ # efibootmgr
Boot to FW : false
BootCurrent: 0005
Timeout : 2 seconds
BootOrder : 0005, 0004, 0001, 0002, 0003, 0000
+Boot0005* FreeBSD
Boot0004* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0001* EFI VMware Virtual SATA CDROM Drive (1.0)
Boot0002* EFI Network
Boot0003* EFI Internal Shell (Unsupported option)
Boot0000* EFI VMware Virtual NVME Namespace (NSID 1)
root@:~ #
efibootmgr -o 0000,0005
. I rebooted and I'm in Windows. I would have to google around what native tool Windows has to manage EFI entries. I'm assuming you can do it somehow.I mean that FreeBSD's boot manager works in any configuration you need or want it to work in. That can be MBR, or GPT. It could be BIOS or UEFI, both paired with either partitioning scheme. I'd highly recommend sticking to GPT on new installs unless you have a really good reason not to (MBR is severely limited...), and if you're doing a dual boot setup, Windows is so fragile that you can't easily swap it and keep an install working. For anything in the last decade, UEFI+GPT is almost a sure thing.
I'm still not sure what you mean by 'FreeBSD's Boot manager'.... I always associate the term with boot0cfg().I mean that FreeBSD's boot manager works in any configuration you need or want it to work in. That can be MBR, or GPT. It could be BIOS or UEFI, both paired with either partitioning scheme. I'd highly recommend sticking to GPT on new installs unless you have a really good reason not to (MBR is severely limited...), and if you're doing a dual boot setup, Windows is so fragile that you can't easily swap it and keep an install working. For anything in the last decade, UEFI+GPT is almost a sure thing.
I'm still not sure what you mean by 'FreeBSD's Boot manager'.... I always associate the term with boot0cfg().
I do not install Windows [...] where it is invariably on an MBR disk.
I'm still not sure what you mean by 'FreeBSD's Boot manager'.... I always associate the term with boot0cfg().
Then you have a very narrow-focused view. Review boot(8), notice gptboot(8) and gptzfsboot(8) especially.
Extremely outdated information
Apologies. I was not aware of boot(8), gptboot(8) and gptzfsboot(8) being boot managers....Then you have a very narrow-focused view. Review boot(8), notice gptboot(8) and gptzfsboot(8) especially.
I'm not providing information, merely relating my personal experience. I'm certainly not uptodate on Windows and don't wish to be. I have a lot of old laptop disks which inevitably have some version of Windows installed, but looking through them yesterday I couldn't find any installed on a GPT disk.Extremely outdated information.
This sounds interesting although I'm not entirely clear about how you do this. I don't generally use bsdinstall these days but use an existing installation to format and partition a new device creating a freebsd-boot and freebsd-ufs partition, then simply extract the kernel and base txz onto the freebsd-ufs partition and reboot. The new device generally boots up straightaway, stopping at the mountroot prompt, but all you need to do is enter ufs:/dev/da1p2 (adjusted for the relevant device) and it carries on to the login prompt.Afair you can also install FreeBSD to an empty partition using bsdinstall on an UEFI/GPT PC and skip the boot setup.
Then copy loader1.efi to the EFI partition (e.g. as /EFI/freebsd/bootx64.efi ) and then manually add a UEFI bootoption with the PCs UEFI menu selecting this copy.
i have a hp thin client boxwhich will not boot gpt without efi. it wont even try, just display an error. mbr or gpt + efi worksAs FreeBSD was the 2nd installed OS I expect to
a) nothing, i.e. no bootcode in lba0 with mandatory magic and fake partition defined if UEFI boot was selected (and if Windows is UEFI booting)
b) FreeBSD's legacy bootcode in case of legacy boot was selected
While OP didn't specify the model of the Asus why would we fallback to legacy boot at all ? If that book is UEFI capable both Windows and FreeBSD can share uefi partition.
I will say I have one lab machine like this and because one of the partition is Linux I let grub take over the boot. Because, well, it's comfortable. If there's no Linux in equation freezr 's solution is neat.
Or, you can select the boot either from UEFI shell or overwrite it in fw ("bios" menu selection).
It's been some time since I legacy (chain)load Windows off the FreeBSD bootloader but this was a thing before too.
I asked this somewhere on this forums before. I'm really curious -- what issues did you run into? I've never run into any issues with GPT.
By "without efi" you mean that disk using GPT requires EFI partition to be preset otherwise client won't attempt to boot ?i have a hp thin client boxwhich will not boot gpt without efi. it wont even try, just display an error. mbr or gpt + efi works
In Chapter 15. The FreeBSD Booting Process, at 15.2.1. The Boot Manager, the Handbook says:If you think there is a mandatory reason for using MBR, I'd like to know why.
FreeBSD's boot manager requires MBR
Chapter 15. The FreeBSD Booting Process
An introduction to the FreeBSD Booting Process, demonstrates how to customize the FreeBSD boot process, including everything that happens until the FreeBSD kernel has started, probed for devices, and started initdocs.freebsd.org
If you have GPT you would probably need to install your own bootloader such as GRUB, which simply adds a number of hurdles into the mix.
"By default, FreeBSD uses the boot0 boot manager.", has not the most general meaning that it may suggest. It is meant for (only) the MBR partitioning scheme specifically; it is easily interpreted otherwise. The Handbook only explains in detail the boot process for a MBR partitioning scheme in combination with UFS. The chain of steps in the boot process varies depending on the partitioning scheme, the filesystem and (CPU) architecture.The boot manager code in the MBR is sometimes referred to as stage zero of the boot process. By default, FreeBSD uses the boot0 boot manager.
boot0cfg
implies, it can act only on boot0
; note that boot0 is the actual MBR. With MBR /boot/boot0 is used at STAGE 0 of the boot process; with GPT /boot/pmbr is used instead.boot0
boot manager). In that way you could brand other individual parts of FreeBSD as "boot managers" as well. On the other hand, looking at it from a broader view, you can say that all these parts together represent "the FreeBSD boot manager". It depends more or less on your point of view.