# Installing FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE with ZFS into an MBR disk



## trilkk (Jan 23, 2014)

I'm having problems installing FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE using the new ZFS option into an MBR disk. I'm aware that GPT (which works out-of-the-box btw.) is what I should use, but I'm dual-booting Windows 7, and the boot manager I'm using does not support GPT.

The installation process itself completes successfully, but it is impossible to boot into the resulting system, since a boot manager is not found.

I have another disk, ada0, which contains Windows 7. I want to install FreeBSD into ada1. Installation produces the following geometry:

```
ada1
- ada1s1 [whole disk]
  * ada1s1a bootpool 2G
  * ada1s1b zroot <lots>
  * ada1s1c swap 8G
```

As said, if I reboot after installation, it's impossible to boot into the resulting system. It seems something is deeply wrong in the partition itself. Booting into the live CD shell and examining ada1 reveals that the geometry data in ada1s1 is gone:
`> gpart show ada1s1
<error>`
shows nothing.

I can manually write the bootcode from the shell:
`> gpart bootcode -b /boot/mbr
> gpart set -a active -i 1 ada1
> dd if=/boot/zfsboot of=/dev/ada1s1 count=1`
But this does not really help. Now I can boot from ada1, and the bootloader runs, even loading loader.conf etc. from bootpool, but does not find my zroot pool, possibly because the geometry information from ada1s1 seems to be gone.

I used to have an UFS2 /boot -partition to do this previously, and it worked fine. So, I'd listen to any kind of advice now.

* How to install with MBR using only ZFS and have the partition table not be broken?
* Create the filesystem manually and just use UFS /boot like before?
* Format ada1 into GPT and use some better boot manager (which one?) in ada0?


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## SirDice (Jan 23, 2014)

*Re: Installing FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE with ZFS into an MBR dis*

I would use GPT and try EasyBCD (Windows application) as a boot manager.


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