[oi-dev] [HEADS UP] Loader is integrated into illumos-gate

[Alexander Pyhalov]

Hello, folks.

The work on porting FreeBSD loader to illumos-gate has been recently 
integrated. It is going to appear in /hipster repository soon.
This concerns all OpenIndiana Hipster users. Briefly, when you update to 
the latest OpenIndiana Hipster AND do beadm activate,
grub will be replaced with loader.

Loader fixes a lot of issues (most annoying is the limit on the count of 
boot environments) and brings in support for new features,
like support for booting from raidz, but after installing loader to 
activate older BEs (which don't have loader userland binaries) you'll
have to interact with loader (i.e. have console access). Newer BEs, 
which have loader userland bits, can be safely activated.

If you have console access, to load old (pre-loader) BE, you can do from 
loader prompt:

ok beadm activate bename
ok load -t rootfs /platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive
ok boot

where "ok" is a loader prompt.

To keep grub as your current loader, you can create file /etc/default/be
with the following line:
BE_HAS_GRUB=true

Note, that in future grub support will be completely removed from 
illumos-gate.

Detailed announcement about loader integration can be found here:

https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/182181/2016/09/sort/time_rev/page/1/entry/0:1/20160923124232:B7978ED4-81AC-11E6-A6DA-02E3F010038B/

-- 
System Administrator of Southern Federal University Computer Center