Single boot EFI Mac install

[Carsten Mattner]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 12:05 AM, peeter (must) <karu.pruun at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Thanks again, partial success so far: could get refit working but
>>> apparently refit does not boot dfly, or at least not yet.
>>>
>>> I made two partitions for dfly as described in the README on the live
>>> cd, a ufs partition for /boot and hammer partition for the rest. refit
>>> recognizes the boot partition as a FreeBSD one and when I choose to
>>> boot it in the refit many then I get a blank screen and then "No
>>> bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key". Then the
>>> computer hangs.
>>
>> 2 GPT partitions or 2 slices in the dragonfly partition?
>>
>>> I thought it might be since refit isn't familiar with 64bit disklablel
>>> but using disklabel32 gives the same result.
>>>
>>> I tried to gptsync the partition tables but refit refuses; refit sees
>>> dfly partitions as "Unknown" and refuses to do anything with them. I
>>> thought there might be a way to force gptsync but refit shell hasn't
>>> got gptsync.
>>
>> Did you use a GPT aware partitioning tool?
>> (g)parted or cgdisk on Linux livecds (sysresccd etc.) or Apple's Disk Util.
>
>
> 2 GPT partitions as described in "Boot setup"
>
> http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=gpt&section=8
>
> However, this might be outdated. As far as I understand, gpt was
> ported from freebsd; freebsd has moved on to gpart now. refit gptsync
> complained about gpt partitions. When I installed freebsd and used
> gpart, then refit was satsified.
>
> I tried installing freebsd on an external usb stick. And succeeded: so
> this is the first time I've succeeded in getting a BSD running on this
> 13" MBPro! Booting sequence is then:
>
> MacEFI --> refit --> fbsd
>
> It turns out fbsd has two exclusive types of partioning schemes. The
> old one, bsd slices; and gpt. They are exclusive: you can't disklabel
> gpt slices. And you should created one gpt slice for each partition
> you want, so eg
>
> /dev/ada0p1    /boot
> /dev/ada0p2    swap
> /dev/ada0p3    /
>
> and so on, as many as you like. dfly man 8 gpt is not quite consistent
> with this. dfly disklabels a gpt slice. Fbsd gpt booting scheme
> involves a small 64k partition that consists of a loader,
> /boot/gptboot, see
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=gpart&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+9.0-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html
>
> However, success did not last long; at the next boot I got "Missing
> operating system" -- a different error message from the last time. I
> did not touch any freebsd partitions, and have no clue what happened.
> I never regained booting to that system.
>
> Installed fbsd on the harddisk and could gptsync and everything. But
> refit boot leads to "Missing operating system".

That usually happens if something changed in the partition table
and it was not synced for BIOS mode boot to work.

Maybe try with a 1MB BIOS BOOT partition prior to the DragonFly partitions?
I haven't needed it, but I know that Fedora Linux insist on adding it
if GPT is in use (or always? not sure).

>>> I wonder if there's a way to make refit recognize how to boot from the
>>
>> I've never booted a BSD via rEFIt. Is it possible you need to have a
>> 1MB BIOS BOOT partition as the 3rd partition?
>>
>>> dfly ufs partition? I was browsing around to find if grub2 might work
>>> but haven't found the right .efi image yet.
>>
>> The following is what "should" work, but I didn't try it out for BSDs.
>>
>> You could of course install a grub.efi image inside the HFS+ partition
>> and then provide a grub.cfg with the chainloader config or kernel
>> loader config based on one of the myriads of grub2 plugins for
>> booting dragonfly.
>> Creating a grub2.efi image file is not hard. Get a livecd with
>> grub2-efi-32 and then use usegrub-mkimage to create an efi image
>> file by selection all plugins/modules you want and the output filename.
>> Once you have that, write or generate a grub.cfg and put it in the
>> same directory.
>> Next bless the grub efi image instead of refit.efi in the OSX installer's
>> terminal.
>>
>> If you have an Nvidia or ATI video adapter you might have to load one
>> of the video bios grub plugins or just boot with rEFIt to avoid such issues.
>
>
> I will try grub32 next.
>
> Another thought: if dfly could port /boot/gptboot from fbsd and set up
> similar booting scheme, then efi booting might be solved?

Sorry I can't help you with that.