[OpenIndiana-discuss] How should a disk partition layout looks like

[Toomas Soome]

> On 6. Jan 2023, at 12:06, Carsten Grzemba via openindiana-discuss <openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org> wrote:
> 
> I have a disk installed with Openindiana and installboot shows bootloader at cxt0d0s1 and has not cxt0d0p1
> The disk will not recognized by BIOS for boot but it boots if selected in loader.
> 
> On other resources shows EFI boot files on cxt0d0p1.
> 
> Is p1 partition necessary for boot?
> How looks like a correct disk partitioning nowadys?
> 

sX is partition from either GPT or VTOC

p0 is whole disk
p1-p4 are MBR primary partitions and p5.. are extended.

With GPT you have MBR in absolute sector 0 and only one partition defined (EFI), this is “protective” MBR and meant to tell non-GPT aware partition programs that you have partition defined. GPT itself is on absolute sector 1 and followed by partition array.

Classic Solaris x86 partitioning is MBR + VTOC, you are supposed to have one Solaris2 MBR primary partition per disk and on that partition you have VTOC. 

With zpool “whole disk” setup, you will get GPT partitioning, with s0[, s1] and s8 defined (GPT does not allow overlapping partitions). Depending if zpool create -B was used, you may or may not have efi system partition.

MBR + VTOC scheme is assuming you have single Solaris2 MBR (primary) partition, in it you have VTOC table and it has to be manually described (usually has root, backup (s2) and boot slices).

rgds,
toomas