[oi-dev] Obstacle to GPT label boot?

[Toomas Soome]

> On 19. Mar 2021, at 02:31, Reginald Beardsley via oi-dev <oi-dev at openindiana.org> wrote:
> 
> Would someone please direct me to an explanation  of why we can't boot from disk >2 TB in 2021?


root at beastie:/code/illumos-gate# format
Searching for disks...done


AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
       0. c3t0d0 <WDC-WD4004FZWX-00GBGB0-81.H0A81-3.64TB>
          /pci at 0,0/pci15d9,805 at 1f,2/disk at 0,0
       1. c3t1d0 <WDC-WD4005FZBX-00K5WB0-01.01A01-3.64TB>
          /pci at 0,0/pci15d9,805 at 1f,2/disk at 1,0
       2. c3t3d0 <WDC-WD4003FZEX-00Z4SA0-01.01A01-3.64TB>
          /pci at 0,0/pci15d9,805 at 1f,2/disk at 3,0
       3. c3t4d0 <WDC-WD4005FZBX-00K5WB0-01.01A01-3.64TB>
          /pci at 0,0/pci15d9,805 at 1f,2/disk at 4,0
Specify disk (enter its number): ^D
root at beastie:/code/illumos-gate# zpool status rpool
  pool: rpool
 state: ONLINE
  scan: resilvered 1,68T in 0 days 10:10:07 with 0 errors on Fri Oct 25 05:05:34 2019
config:

        NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        rpool       ONLINE       0     0     0
          raidz1-0  ONLINE       0     0     0
            c3t0d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
            c3t1d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
            c3t3d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
            c3t4d0  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors
root at beastie:/code/illumos-gate# 

I can tell, this system does boot just fine with both UEFI and BIOS firmware.

rgds,
toomas

> 
> It's very hard for me to see a significant obstacle to reading an x86 MBR that loads code that will then boot from GPT label disks.
> 
> I'm rebuilding my Sol 10 u8 system with my spare 2 TB disk.  I'd like to replace the 3x  2 TB disk RAIDZ1 setup with  a 4-5x disk RAIDZ2 using 4 TB disks using my s0 & s1 configuration.
> 
> I must assume that the Illumos market is dominated by customers who don't care about having a few small SMI labeled boot disks in a farm of large GPT labeled disks.  But for a 7 SATA port system, that's not very viable.
> 
> Linux, MS and BSD can do it, so we should be able to do it also.  It's become enough of a personal nuisance that I'm willing to fix it if I get a modest level of cooperation.
> 
> So please, point me at any known issues.  For workstations the s0 root pool and s1 export pool works really well.
> 
> Reg
> 
> BTW After a DIMM shuffle, "format -e" and scrubs no longer dump core on u8.  Now X goes off into la-la land :-(  Clearly I need new DIMMS.
> 



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