Single boot EFI Mac install

[peeter (must)]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 6:49 PM, Carsten Mattner wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 12:05 AM, peeter (must) 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 However, this might be outdated.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'll try that next! grub2 failed.

Peeter

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