Samsung ATIV BOOK 2. Dual boot FreeBSD - Windows 8

[emmex]

In this post I will explain how I have set up an ATIV BOOK 2 model NP270E5E-K02IT equipped with Windows 8, to dual-boot Windows and FreeBSD 10-STABLE. The disk is partitioned with UEFI and I have maintained the GPT partition scheme.

After the FreeBSD installation the dual boot process will be possible modifying the BIOS parameters: power on the laptop while pressing F2, in the BIOS menu Boot - Secure Boot select Disabled, if OS Mode Selection is CSM OS will starts FreeBSD otherwise if UEFI OS is selected, Windows will boots.

On my laptop I want to install sysutils/beadm, an utility to manage Boot Environments with ZFS. This permits me the switch between FreeBSD 11-CURRENT and 10-STABLE easily, but In this post I don’t speak about this.

Before of all make a full backup copy of your HDD. You need a backup program that understand UEFI. If you don’t know what to use, try CloneZilla Live CD.

1. Shrink the Windows Partition.

You need some disk space for FreeBSD. I have done this job in Windows with Disk Management, but there are dozens of other methods available. I have leaved 211 GiB for Windows and 230 GiB for FreeBSD, the space must be Unallocated. If you need a guide you can read How to Dual Boot Windows 8 with Windows 7, up to point 3) “Shrink the Windows 8 partition to create unallocated space for use when installing Windows 7”.
A note about Windows 8 Fast Boot, in the link above it will be disabled but you can leave it enabled or disabled as you like.

2. The FreeBSD 10-STABLE installation.

The laptop Wi-Fi chipset needs a recent FreeBSD 10 for working, I have used this ISO image: FreeBSD-10.0-BETA4-amd64-disc1.iso downloaded from ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/10.0/ or you can download an usually more recent amd64 RELENG_10 image from https://pub.allbsd.org/FreeBSD-snapshots.

For using beadm is not possible to use the FreeBSD installer, the installation is done by typing a lots of commands at console. For more info look at the original post about beadm: Thread 31662. I have modified the procedure for Server with One Disk.

Insert the FreeBSD CD in the DVD tray and power off the PC. Power on the laptop with F10 pressed to select the CD as boot device.

1. Boot from the FreeBSD CD
2. Select ‘Live CD’ option
3. login: root
4. # sh
Select your keyboard layout, this is not necessary with US keyboard.
5. # kbdmap
6. # gpart add -t freebsd-boot -l bootcode0 -s 128k -i 10 ada0
7. # gpart add -t freebsd-zfs -l sys0 -i 11 ada0
8. # gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 10 ada0
9. # zpool create -f -o cachefile=/tmp/zpool.cache sys /dev/gpt/sys0
Ignore the warning: “Cannot mount ‘sys’: no such file or directory”
10. # zfs set mountpoint=none sys
11. # zfs set checksum=fletcher4 sys
12. # zfs set atime=off sys
Optional: enable compression.
13 # zfs set compression=lz4 sys
14. # zfs create sys/ROOT
15. # zfs create -o mountpoint=/mnt sys/ROOT/default
16. # zpool set bootfs=sys/ROOT/default sys
17. # cd /usr/freebsd-dist/
18. # for I in base.txz kernel.txz src.txz; do
> tar --unlink -xvpJf ${I} -C /mnt
> done
19. # cp /tmp/zpool.cache /mnt/boot/zfs/
20. # cat << EOF >> /mnt/boot/loader.conf
> zfs_load=YES
> vfs.root.mountfrom="zfs:sys/ROOT/default"
> EOF
21. # cat << EOF >> /mnt/etc/rc.conf
> zfs_enable=YES
> EOF
22. # :> /mnt/etc/fstab
23. # zfs umount -a
24. # zfs set mountpoint=legacy sys/ROOT/default
25. # reboot

A note about compression. I always enable compression on my ZFS pools, in this moment this give me a free 33% of disk space on my laptop.

3. Basic Setup after Install
Follow the “4. Basic setup after install” in the original beadm post Thread 31662 ignoring the part about the Road Warrior Laptop.

4. Network
You need the internet connection for installing beadm. The FreeBSD documentation is 30.3 Wireless Networking.

My Wireless Security Option is WPA-PSK (TPIK) and my SSID name is Router Netgear and suppose that the passfrase is my_password.

In /boot/loader.conf I added

# Wi-Fi
if_ath_load="YES"
wlan_wep_load="YES"
wlan_ccmp_load="YES"
wlan_tkip_load="YES"

In /etc/rc.conf

# LAN & Wi-Fi
ifconfig_re0="DHCP"
wlans_ath0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"

I have created the file /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

network={
    ssid="Router Netgear"
    psk="my_password"
}

Reboot or issue the command # service netif start and you should have the internet connection.

5. Enable the Boot Environments
Install the beadm utility from the FreeBSD packages collections with the command
# pkg install beadm

If all is correct the beadm list should give an output similar to:

# beadm list
BE              Active Mountpoint  Space Created
default         NR      /          722.2M 2013-12-05 12:38

6. Create New Boot Environmnent Before Upgrade
Follow the “6.1. Create New Boot Environmnent Before Upgrade” in the original post Thread 31662

Now the beadm list command should give:

# beadm list
BE              Active Mountpoint  Space Created
default         -      -          212.2K  2013-12-05 12:38
upgrade         NR      /          722.3M 2013-12-05 13:51

"You are now free to do anything You like for the upgrade process, but even if You break everything, You still have a working default working environment."
As @vermaden says. Thank You.