Solved how do I install FreeBSD to a zfs-slice instead of a zfs-disk

Keve

Keve

I am comfortable with the process of installing FreeBSD to zfs, when (at least) one entire disk becomes the target. This option is available in bsdinstall.
I am also familiar with the process of creating a custom size freebsd-ufs slice and making that slice to be the installation target. This I do by dropping to a shell, use gpart to prepare the slice, then return back to bsdinstall where I can set this dedicated slice up for becoming the root partition.
I can also get as far as creating a freebsd-zfs slice of a desired size and placing loader.efi at the right place on the ESP. But I found no way in bsdinstall to then point to such a freebsd-zfs slice and make that to be the target of the installation. The handbook does not describe such a scenario either.

I want to share my single SSD between other systems, each with their own filesystem type.
I could still stick to using UFS for FreeBSD, but boot environments, snapshots, and network backup/restore are zfs features that I could largely benefit from even on a practice/workbench system. Hence the desire to keep FreeBSD within its dedicated slice on a storage device shared by other systems, but use zfs inside that slice.

So, how do I install FreeBSD to a zfs-slice of a specific size instead of giving the entire disk to zfs?
Suggestions, pointers, advice are welcome!
 
There's also a tutorial on here by patovm04 which is what I used successfully.
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Thread '[UEFI/GPT] [Dual-Boot] How to install FreeBSD (with ZFS) alongside another OS (sharing the same disk)'

Important notes:
1) This tutorial assumes you have the OS you want to dual-boot with already installed on your drive, and that you already have freed up some disk space. Essentially, you will be installing FreeBSD with root-on-ZFS on the remaining free space of the disk, instead of using the entire drive as it's done by default by FreeBSD's installer.
2) This method only works for GPT disk layouts using UEFI mode. Legacy BIOS and MBR disks are not supported. As always, make sure to disable Secure Boot and Fast Boot.
3) Here, we use ada0 (disk 1) for everything, and we assume your...
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T-Aoki said:
Does this Vermaden's page help?
Click to expand...
Yes, it does. This is a very much usable workaround for my issue. And for the moment, it perfectly fits my needs. Not to mention the fact that the use of the method described there goes beyound my current needs, comes handy in many other situations. A very good read indeed. Thanks for pointing me to it!
That forum howto is also a very useful source of FreeBSD installation jiggery-pokery and demonstrates likely everything I now was after.
 
scottro said:
There's also a tutorial on here by patovm04 which is what I used successfully.
Click to expand...
I certainly need to pay more attention to the forum howtos. This is a treasure mine right in front of us, and I did not even care to investigate properly. A good lesson for today.
 
Slice means MBR scheme unless Op confuses terms... Do you?

Concerning MBR, there is no solution with bsdinstall. It's bugged since ages about this scheme, at least with ZFS on root.
 
Emrion said:
Slice means MBR scheme unless Op confuses terms... Do you?
Click to expand...
Yes, OP confuses these terms. Always. :-)
For me, the correct word is and will always be partition. Regardless of the partitioning scheme being MBR, APM or GPT.
Back in the days when there was no GPT yet, I learnt that in FreeBSD terminology a partition is called a slice. And I will likely never unlearn that.
 
Keve said:
Yes, OP confuses these terms. Always. :-)
For me, the correct word is and will always be partition. Regardless of the partitioning scheme being MBR, APM or GPT.
Back in the days when there was no GPT yet, I learnt that in FreeBSD terminology a partition is called a slice. And I will likely never unlearn that.
Click to expand...
What confuse you would be GPT "partitions" are called as "partition" on FreeBSD, too.
Well, let's think that "partition" in protective MBR, which occupies the whole drive, of GPT as "slice" and "whole GPT schema" is created in the slice.

This could make it clearer to understand.
Historically, GPT is much newer than other partitioning schemes, and MBR partitioning was most "widely" used.
Protective MBR is defined for any partitionig tools which does NOT know about GPT to think "Ah, this drive is already occupied by single partition, so no space left to handle.". This is quite similar with FreeBSD "slice" in MBR partitioning scheme. Isn't it?

And why FreeBSD used the term "slice" would be because Unix(TM), which first BSD [which required Unix source code license to obtain from UCB and derived OS'es like FreeBSD, NetBSD etc. are based on its last intentionall-incomplete version which does not contain original proprietary codes from Unix(TM)] historically used more than 4 "partitions" to be installed, but MBR had quite strong limitation here, only 4 allowed.
So 2 options are provided for PCs, "whole drive" approach and "call physical MBR partition as slice and partition inside it" approach.

So understanding "slice" as "a variation of extended DOS partition" would be clearer, and the existense of protective MBR allows the whole GPT schema as "a kind of extended DOS partition having partition type of 0xEE (some BIOS/firmware abuses 0xEF for it)". I've resolved my early confusions as such.
 
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