# ZFS on root install with multi-boot



## tuaris (Aug 31, 2019)

I have a pre-2015 MBP that runs MacOS X and Windows 7.  There is about 70 GB of free space at the end of the SSD.  I figured, why not install FreeBSD on it and have a neat triple boot setup.  

I'd like to use ZFS but `bsdinstall` doesn't handle automatic partitioning with ZFS very well in this case.  It by default wants to use the entire SSD.  The only option seems to be the manual partitioning approach, but I'm not sure what I would need to do to make sure it's done correctly and is able to boot.

This is the output of `gpart` on the system using the bootable installation image


```
=>       34  977104993  ada0  GPT  (466G)
         34          6        - free -  (3.0K)
         40     409600     1  efi  (200M)
     409640  237144560     2  apple-hfs  (113G)
  237554200    1269544     3  apple-boot  (620M)
  238823744       1728        - free -  (864K)
  238825472  583036928     4  ms-basic-data  (278G)
  821862400  155242627        - free -  (74G)

=>       34  977104993  diskid/DISK-S1K5NYAF540231  GPT  (466G)
         34          6                              - free -  (3.0K)
         40     409600                           1  efi  (200M)
     409640  237144560                           2  apple-hfs  (113G)
  237554200    1269544                           3  apple-boot  (620M)
  238823744       1728                              - free -  (864K)
  238825472  583036928                           4  ms-basic-data  (278G)
  821862400  155242627                              - free -  (74G)
```


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## monwarez (Sep 8, 2019)

Given there is an EFI partition, I assume that UEFI is in use, in that case FreeBSD will need to install it's loader in /EFI/FreeBSD/BOOTX64.efi . Which is not currently possible ( FreeBSD UEFI) .
Another possibility would be to use legacy BIOS to load a FreeBSD bootloader, create two slices: one for the boot, the other for the zfs filesystem.
And then update the bootcode  (assuming it is the 5th):

`gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 5 ada0`

For the partitioning it will be a *freebsd-boot* for the boot partition and a *freebsd-zfs* for the zfs one.


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## dchmelik (May 7, 2020)

Same problem (except MBR with one different OS: ) want to install FreeBSD Unix on ZFS on first partition, Slackware GNU/Linux on EXT4 on second partition.  I created partitions ahead of time (and gave them FreeBSD and ‘Linux’ types) but the ZFS installer says have to only use full drive; manual installer doesn't seem to allow/help for ZFS... well, I will probably use FreeBSD on UFS for now, as I have to get to sleep, but would like to come back and upgrade it to ZFS... preferably with an improved installer (from development branch?)... because nowadays, why _not_ even have ZFS /?


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