Hi, Time and again, I have run into situations where I needed some components in the FreeBSD installer, but they are not there yet. I hope folks will look at my PR seriously and consider bundling in those missing parts in the standard FreeBSD installer. Mainly, I need 3 packages pre-built into the installer. They are as under : 1) rsync - for times when I do not need to do a fresh install, but simply rsync from a backup into a freshly created / filesystem. 2) linuxfdisk - this owes primarily to FreeBSD's stubborn refusal to switch off EBR_COMPAT in the default kernel. If linuxfdisk is present in the installer, the user can create EBR partitions from a shell initiated in the installer. 3) e2fsprogs - it makes sense to let mkfs.ext2/ext3/ext4 and fsck.ext2/ext3/ext4 get into the installer if linuxfdisk is already there. Usually users like to have FreeBSD's / on UFS and other slices on Linux filesystems because those filesystems work outside of FreeBSD as well. I shall be glad if FreeBSD makers find my points to be viable enough for action. Thanks, Manish Jain
The MBR limitations have been overcome with GPT. Most operating systems have switched to GPT and UEFI booting. The in-kernel ext2/3 support is limited to small inodes and lacks journaling support. For full ext3/4 support you have to use fuse which has its own share of problems and limitations. The best file system to share data between FreeBSD and Linux at the moment is ZFS. In theory you could even install FreeBSD and Linux into the same ZFS pool.
I am not really concerned about sharing filesystems between FreeBSD and Linux. What I am concerned about is the lack of rsync, linuxfdisk and mkfs.ext2 in the FreeBSD installer. Having these components in the FreeBSD installer permits multiple conveniences via the FreeBSD installation CD/DVD/memstick not available otherwise. These components make the installer's shell much more powerful. As for GPT and UEFI, these are a real pain. GPT cannot multi-boot; UEFI is GPT-linked crap that originated at Intel. Operating systems work best with MBR and BIOS. Irrespective of whether one uses MBR+BIOS or GPT+UEFI, the components I request are still needed in the installation media.
These are all absolute no-goes on the basis of GPL license. What is in the official installer is pkg, or at least a bootstrap version that can download the real pkg(8) and install these things from the pkg repositories. I don't know what limitation you're facing with EBR. My impression is we can create EBR partitions fine in the default config; is that not true? If not, I'd really like to fix that instead of dragging in linuxfdisk. (Of course, the new thing is GPT instead.) I don't know what you mean by "GPT cannot multi-boot;" this is factually inaccurate.
Hi Conrad, Got it, thanks. I did not realize there was a license issue. FreeBSD's default config cannot create EBR partitions. I raised a PR for this : https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=232463 After much heckling, the PR was assigned to geom for action, but none was taken. Can you at least have the EBR problem fixed ? I have tried multi-booting FreeBSD+Linux with GPT but failed, possibly because of insufficient knowledge. Can you be kind enough to send me some documentation on how to multi-boot FreeBSD+Linux GPT ? Which boot loader works for that setup ? Grub is able to boot Linux GPT, but fails to boot FreeBSD GPT on my system for unknown reasons despite a seemingly correct menu entry in grub.cfg. Further, is usage of UEFI mandatory with GPT ? When I try to install Linux with GPT without UEFI, boot-loader installation fails. Thanks for any possible documentation to increase to awareness level. And please try to get the EBR issue sorted out. Look forward to hearing from you, Manish Jain