[oi-dev] GPT Partitioning for Illumos/Solaris

[Atiq Rahman]

Here's my partition table rice. Folks who are not used to multi-boots, look
away! :)

```
$ sudo parted /dev/nvme0n1 print
Model: MTFDKBA1T0QFM-1BD1AABGB (nvme)
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name                   Flags
 1      1049kB  538MB   537MB   fat32        EFI System Partition   boot,
esp
 2      538MB   138GB   137GB                   illumos
 3      138GB   275GB   137GB                   illum data
 4      275GB   344GB   68.7GB  zfs           pop_os
 5      344GB   482GB   137GB   zfs           pop data
 6      482GB   886GB   404GB   zfs           data_buffer_future
 7      886GB   886GB   33.6MB                 MSFT Res.           msftres
 8      886GB   1023GB  137GB                 Win Main
msftdata
 9      1023GB  1024GB  805MB                Win Rec. Env.       diag
```

with partition type codes,

```
$ sudo sgdisk --print /dev/nvme0n1 print
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 2000409264 sectors, 953.9 GiB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): AE0E738B-0C1E-459A-975A-F330D0B30680
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 2000409230
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 4029 sectors (2.0 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048         1050623   512.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System
Partition
   2         1050624       269486079   128.0 GiB      BF00   illumos
   3       269486080       537921535   128.0 GiB    BF05   illum data
   4       537921536       672139263   64.0 GiB      A504   pop_os
   5       672139264       940574719   128.0 GiB    BF01   pop data
   6       940574720      1730334719   376.6 GiB   BF01   data_buffer_future
   7      1730334720      1730400255   32.0 MiB    0C01   MSFT Res.
   8      1730400256      1998835711   128.0 GiB   0700   Win Main
   9      1998835712      2000407215   767.3 MiB   2700   Win Rec. Env.
```

Cheers!

On Wed, Aug 27, 2025 at 2:21 PM Atiq Rahman <atiqcx at gmail.com> wrote:

> > but only boots linux kernels
> heard void linux maintains ZFS Boot Menu. And they only support linux
> kernels (vmlinuz) for now, sadly!
>
> On Sat, Aug 23, 2025 at 5:35 PM Eric J Bowman <mellowmutt at zoho.com> wrote:
>
>> I have ZFS Boot Menu in my 'standard' rEFInd+ options (I also launch it
>> from netboot.xyz), but oddly it doesn't see cachyos, but does see
>> GhostBSD (not illumos ZFS tho) but only boots linux kernels. While I think
>> it suffers from feature creep, I like it in concept. So I've stripped down
>> a FreeBSD kernel, to basically give me beadm and the ability to boot
>> multiple illumos/FreeBSD installs on the same drive, but what I'm driving
>> at is using illumos kernel (as EFI app on FAT32) because the fastboot
>> facility (not to be confused with FreeBSD fastboot) allows me to access
>> bootable partitions after the NVMe driver loads -- this allows me to run
>> NVMe in a PCIe slot on older systems without firmware NVMe support, BIOS or
>> UEFI, and illumos fastboot can load any multiboot2-compliant kernel...
>> supposedly.
>>
>> -Eric
>>
>>
>>
>> ---- On Wed, 20 Aug 2025 09:33:19 -0700 *Atiq Rahman <atiqcx at gmail.com
>> <atiqcx at gmail.com>>* wrote ---
>>
>> > 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.
>>
>> Have any of you ever tried the ZFS Boot Menu? I heard good things about
>> it, thinking of trying it.
>>
>> Best!
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://openindiana.org/pipermail/oi-dev/attachments/20250827/c0d902ac/attachment-0001.html>