# FreeBSD 10 w/ fresh root-on-ZFS fails to boot



## argiopeweb (Aug 16, 2014)

This is a cross-post from the FreeBSD-questions mailing list. I'm hoping the targeted forum will net me better results.

I'm attempting to install FreeBSD 10 from the memstick image. Installing with Guided partitioning works and boots with no modifications, but I'd prefer to run ZFS. I've spent the last 6 hours pursuing that goal to no avail. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

So far I have attempted to install with root-on-ZFS with GPT and MBR, swap on and off, and 4k alignment on and off. I've also done some half-hearted playing with the loader.conf & etc after the install, but, since all the references I can find are focused on FreeBSD 9, I've come to the conclusion that the root-on-ZFS utility knows better than I what needs to be done.

The only variable change which seems to have an effect is the GPT/MBR change. GPT gives:


```
gptzfsboot: error 1 lba 48
gptzfsboot: error 1 lba 1
gptzfsboot: No ZFS pools located, can't boot
```

after POST. MBR POSTs, then freezes with no output. As best I can tell with gpart(), the partition table is effectively equivalent between guided and root-on-ZFS w/ GPT installs (with the obvious exception of the filesystem on ada0s2).

Hardware platform is a 2009-era Dell Studio XPS with a Core2 Duo and 8GB RAM. Installation media is a 40GB OCZ Vertex II SSD.

SSD has a healthy SMART status. Install with Guided partitioning still boots/runs as expected.


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## argiopeweb (Aug 19, 2014)

Pulled 9.3 today to see if this issue was specific to 10. Ran into the same problems from the installer. I re-copied 10 onto the flash drive and used it to install in a VM to ensure I wasn't insane. VM installed cleanly with ZFS, and I did a manual re-install with deduplication and compression enabled (to ensure myself I knew what I was doing) which also worked as expected.

I'm honestly not sure what's going on here. The disk works with UFS, GPT works with UFS, the install media is good, and I have no problems installing ZFS in a VM. My conclusion is that it's some odd device-specific issue, and is probably worthy of a bug report.


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## argiopeweb (Aug 19, 2014)

Tried a new hard drive and I have the same issue.

A little bit of `printf()` debugging in sys/boot/common/drv.c has narrowed this down to `drvread()` (called by gptzfsboot). The ZFS Pool message is in sys/boot/i386/zfsboot/zfsboot.c, but I need to do more tracing to figure out which call to drvread is causing issues.

It seems this is no longer an installation issue. Could a moderator recommend a better forum? I'm guessing "FreeBSD Development", but I'd prefer not to add to the noise if that's the wrong place to bring this up.


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