Boot from ZFS root with FreeBSD 9.2

(Update: The newly released FreeBSD 10 makes a ZFS setup in the menu system easy.. give it a try)

Booting from a ZFS root has always been a dream of mine, but I've never managed to make it work.

Since I'm deploying new FreeBSD 9.2 images for testing in my lab, I thought this would be a good time to give it a shot again.

I based this off the FreeBSD install page, with some simplification and a few small additions.

I took a freshly installed FreeBSD 9.2 system to act as my workstation for this, and plugged in a 8 gig USB Flash drive to be my ZFS root.

In my setup, da0 is the booted system, da1 is the blank USB Flash Drive.

I often do not use swap partitions on USB Flash, as it can prematurely wear the drive.  I make my USB Flash drives as disposable as possible, so keeping crash dumps isn't a concern.

NOTE: Solaris always called it's root ZFS pool 'rpool' and I recommend you do the same, as it's a existing standard. My use of 'zroot' here is because I was only fooling around... and seem to be too lazy to change the text below without testing for typos.

Here is what I have executed to make it work:


gpart create -s gpt da1
gpart add -b 34 -s 64k -t freebsd-boot -l boot0 da1
gpart add -t freebsd-zfs -l root0 da1
gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 da1

#This may fail with an "operation not permitted" error message, since the kernel likes to protect critical parts of the #disk. If this happens for you, run:
#
# sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=0x10


kldload /boot/kernel/opensolaris.ko
kldload /boot/kernel/zfs.ko

zpool create zroot da1p2
# DO NOT FORGET TO MAKE IT P2! Specify da1, and zfs will kill your gpt tabes
zpool set bootfs=zroot zroot
zfs set checksum=fletcher4 zroot


#Make sure your FreeBSD 9.2 CD is in your drive

mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /mnt

cd /mnt/usr/freebsd-dist

cat base.txz | tar --unlink -xpJf - -C /zroot
cat kernel.txz | tar --unlink -xpJf - -C /zroot
cat doc.txz | tar --unlink -xpJf - -C /zroot
cat lib32.txz | tar --unlink -xpJf - -C /zroot
cat ports.txz | tar --unlink -xpJf - -C /zroot
cat src.txz | tar --unlink -xpJf - -C /zroot

chroot /zroot


echo 'zfs_enable="YES"' > /etc/rc.conf
echo 'sshd_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf
echo 'hostname="freebsd92zfs"' >> /etc/rc.conf

echo 'zfs_load="YES"' > /boot/loader.conf
echo 'vfs.root.mountfrom="zfs:zroot"' >> /boot/loader.conf

tzsetup

cd /etc/mail
make aliases

exit
cp /boot/zfs/zpool.cache /zroot/boot/zfs/zpool.cache
zpool export zroot




I then pull the USB Flash Drive, pop it into a spare machine, and presto, it's booting.


I'll fill in more about this as I play with ZFS on root for my USB Flash Drive systems.