Help - How to get FreeBSD zroot on Vultr baremetal

Some baremetal server providers support FreeBSD, but they rarely provide a zfs on root option to install the OS on a mirrored or striped zraid.

Why is this important?

Beside the obvious benefits of ZFS, it's a required dependency for certain jail managers, like iocage.

⚠️ Assumptions

These instructions assume you know how to finish the FreeBSD installer on your own without needing someone to wipe your ass. If you can't finish the FreeBSD installer and Google a couple of missing details then stop now and get a VPS on Digital Ocean with a zroot.

Begin the Bootstrap

My Vultr baremetal server has two 240GB SSDs. The server boots from a single UFS disk ada0 and disk two(ada1) is unused.

• Use the boot disk ada0 to fetch the FreeBSD .img.
• Copy .img to the unused ada1 disk and boot from the FreeBSD .img.
• While booting from the FreeBSD installer on ada1 Reinstall FreeBSD over ada0 with ZFS on root.
• Reboot onto ada0 and add ada1 to the zroot RAID.

Start

df -h
gpart show
ls /dev/
gpart create -s GPT ada1
gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 1M ada1
gpart show ada1
gpart show
newfs -U /dev/ada1p1
fetch https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/11.1/FreeBSD-11.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img
sha256 FreeBSD-11.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img
dd if=FreeBSD-11.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/ada1 bs=1M conv=sync

Then type: gpart show

It should look like this:

# gpart show
=>       40  468862048  ada0  GPT  (224G)
         40       1024     1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
       1064  468861024     2  freebsd-ufs  (224G)

=>      3  1508214  ada1  GPT  (224G) [CORRUPT]
        3     1600     1  efi  (800K)
     1603      118     2  freebsd-boot  (59K)
     1721  1504448     3  freebsd-ufs  (735M)
  1506169     2048     4  freebsd-swap  (1.0M)

=>      3  1508214  diskid/DISK-PHDV723507A0240AGN  GPT  (224G) [CORRUPT]
        3     1600                               1  efi  (800K)
     1603      118                               2  freebsd-boot  (59K)
     1721  1504448                               3  freebsd-ufs  (735M)
  1506169     2048                               4  freebsd-swap  (1.0M)

Now: reboot

And open the Vultr instance Console view to see the BIOS boot process and intercept the boot loader.

While Rebooting...

At the bootloader's "Welcome to FreeBSD" screen, Press 3.

Then at the prompt type (source) the following:

unload
lsdev

Which will return something like this:

disk devices:
	disk0:	BIOS drive C (468862128 X 512):
		disk0p1: FreeBSD boot
		disk0p2: FreeBSD UFS
	disk1:	BIOS drive D (468862128 X 512):
		disk1p1: EFI
		disk1p2: FreeBSD boot
		disk1p3: FreeBSD UFS
		disk1p4: FreeBSD swap
pxe devices:

So, after that prints, change the boot device to disk1 just like this:

set currdev=disk1s1a
boot

Reinstall FreeBSD

Next, next, next, overwrite the original boot ada0 disk, & Install.

Not sure what would happen if you overwrote the installer bootstrap bootdisk...

Profit

Now setup your fresh ZFS-on-root FreeBSD install.

Try this resource to mirror or stripe your extra ada1 bootstrap disk.

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/49702/

Contribute

This Gist is to help me remember how to install FreeBSD zroot on Vultr baremetal and to let Google index it to help others. If Vultr liked this, contact me. http://reelsense.tv/contact

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