[oi-dev] GPT Partitioning for Illumos/Solaris

[Atiq Rahman]

Hi Eric,
> The "Solaris Root" partition type is relevant to UFS, not ZFS. On UEFI,
set s0/p1 to be an ESP, "boot, hidden, esp" flags and format it fat32

Yep, I have done that quite a while ago. Linux is booting alright with that.

> your "Solaris Reserved" should be s8/p9, 8Mib, -1MiB from end of disk
. That's for legacy / MBR partitions. Mine is GPT. I don't need that or any
other partition for Solaris. I only need one single partition of zfs /
illumos and that's working so far.

> /EFI/OpenIndiana/bootx64.efi (copy of loader.efi)
I put mine on /EFI/Solaris/

I might try rEFInd in future. Right now, I'm booting everything using
Linux's bootloader.

Thanks,

Atiq


On Thu, Aug 14, 2025 at 8:25 PM Eric J Bowman <mellowmutt at zoho.com> wrote:

> >
> > parted > mkpart illumos 767GB 100%
> >
> > and then set the partition type to solaris launching,
> >
> > $ sudo gdisk /dev/nvme0n1
> >
> > (set the GUID to "6A85CF4D-1DD2-11B2-99A6-080020736631" )
> >
>
>
> The "Solaris Root" partition type is relevant to UFS, not ZFS. On UEFI,
> set s0/p1 to be an ESP, "boot, hidden, esp" flags and format it fat32, your
> "Solaris Reserved" should be s8/p9, 8Mib, -1MiB from end of disk. Your ZFS
> partition should be set to ZFS for illumos, FreeBSD ZFS for freebsd. Being
> bootable is a property of the ZFS filesystem, not its partition.
>
> /EFI
> /EFI/OpenIndiana/bootx64.efi (copy of loader.efi)
> /EFI/boot
>
> I put rEFInd Plus in /EFI/boot, with a backup of its bootx64.efi in case
> it gets overwritten.
>
> /EFI/boot/drivers/x64_zfs.efi
>
> This driver will allow rEFInd to stub-load loader64.efi from your ZFS
> partition on most firmware, some will still need the
> /EFI/OpenIndiana/bootx64.efi. I don't know if the string "OpenIndiana" is
> registered, this one is:
>
> /EFI/FreeBSD
>
> That's the gist of multiboot on UEFI, more work if you want more than one
> illumos or freebsd partition, but they will coexist peacefully.
>
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