Other bios-boot partition

When running gpart add -t bios-boot da* what actually gets created in this partition, and is it mountable?

According to gpart() :-

bios-boot The system partition dedicated to second stage of
the boot loader program. Usually it is used by
the GRUB 2 loader for GPT partitioning schemes.
 
Nothing gets put in the partition, but the magic number (Parition Type GUID) for bios-boot is used to identify the partition type within GPT’s partition entries at the start (and end) of the disk.
 
Am I correct in assuming this partition is where Grub 2 installs itself and knows which partition to read the configuration files from?


I've spent a couple of days trying to get Grub 2 working but nothing seems to boot, at least not on a GPT disk...
 
I got GRUB2 working on a dual-boot system with GPT and a bios-boot partition. I found it easy. Where exactly are your problems? Maybe i can help.
 
I got GRUB2 working on a dual-boot system with GPT and a bios-boot partition. I found it easy. Where exactly are your problems? Maybe i can help.

I have been unable to install a working Grub 2 system after a couple of days trial and error. I thought I did with Ubuntu but discovered it was on an MBR system. Debian seemed to install properly, ie no errors were generated but the system wouldn't. With Ubuntu, I couldn't figure out how to create a GPT disk, so I used FreeBSD's gpart, but kept encountering installation errors. Tried Arch Linux but installation of some files failed because 'some guy hadn't maintained some signature for a key from a keyring' !....

I understand that Grub2 needs a bios-boot partition on GPT, but I don't if I'm supposed to create that before installing an OS which uses Grub2. The disk which I installed Debian on does not have such a partition, but having looked at it, grub.cfg has lots of references to hd2, which it was at the time I installed it, but when I booted it it was hd0, so maybe that had some bearing...

Basically I have two problems here. Firstly my Multiboot disk which used Grub2 for several years and was working fine, suddenly stopped displaying the Grub options menu - some Windows Winpe starts up a command shell.
Secondly, I can't produce a Grub2 system where I could migrate my Multiboot system.
 
Although I haven't done the combination of BIOS and GPT, I have done BIOS and MBR. For what it's worth, I've always had some difficulty booting FreeBSD from a Debian based system (chiefly Ubuntu and Mint), and more success booting from a RedHat based system, (CentOS and Fedora.) VoidLinux and ArchLinux have also worked well for me. I don't know if it's worth your trouble to try one of those distributions (or your use case, whether it's even practical to do so), but I can have the same 40_custom on Void and on Mint, and it works on Void but not on Mint. I've never really investigated thoroughly, and these days, do everything on UEFI, (where Debian based distributions still don't work).
 
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