Are efi partition and freebsd-boot partition related with each other?

[Seven Hong]

I have been googling on these for hours but didn't find helpful things, so I guess I am going to post a thread here..

I see that my freebsd usb stick(UEFI x64) has following partition scheme:

efi
freebsd-boot
freebsd-ufs
freebsd-swap

I actually installed on my laptop(UEFI, duh) without freebsd-boot, and my laptop can boot into FreeBSD smoothly:

efi
freebsd-ufs
freebsd-swap

Question 1: Does this mean freebsd-boot is kind of optional and only efi is required? What does freebsd-boot actually do? How is freebsd-boot related with efi?

Now I have another UEFI laptop installed linux on it with extra spaces following linux partitions:

efi
linux-swap
linux-data
extra spaces

Question 2: Can I skip adding efi and freebsd-boot partitions for FreeBSD installation? So I mean can I do this:

efi
linux-swap
linux-data
<---- no freebsd-boot here as I assume it's optional? and no efi because I already have an efi above?
freebsd-ufs

Because I know that linux and windows can share one efi partition, so I wonder if FreeBSD can do similar thing.

 

[SirDice]

The freebsd-boot partition is only required for "old-school" booting. It's not needed for UEFI boot. They both serve similar purposes, just in a different way.

Handbook: Chapter 12. The FreeBSD Booting Process