test

ACK

is it possible to adjust volume of pc speaker of mobo?

mixer shows one called speaker but no effect

dang, manpage says there is no volume control

spkr(4)

nxjoseph, Uhm... As far as I know the "PC Speaker" is a 1-bit output in hardware and not actually an audio output like other audio outputs. I always disable it to avoid any obnoxious noise from it.

It's generally used for console beeps and a few other alert type things but that is it.

thanks

Pretty sure the speaker seen in the mixer is going to be the actual audio output that one would connect an audio plug to the motherboard jack to a speaker and then audio would be sent there. That's separate from the PC Speaker.

so I've just learned the semi-hard way that although the partitions are mirrored when installing freebsd in a zfs mirror, the second disk is not actually set up properly to boot when the first disk is removed

is there any official documentation on how to set up the second disk to be bootable?

this is for an EFI/GPT system

I've found a few scattered articles on the web about doing this, but not for EFI.

Zerock, Hmm... That has not been my experience. I can boot with either disk of a mirror removed. Or with any two disks in a raidz2 removed. I went through a problem cycle where I tested the 2 disks failed in a raidz2 case with live failures and it worked okay for me.

hmm

maybe I just did something wrong during testing

let me try again

For documentation on this read through wiki.freebsd.org/MasonLoringBliss/ZFSandGELIbyHAND

I've moved my znc jail to a new host so at least I can stay on here whilst messing about

You are specifically mentioning EFI (and pedantically I assume you mean UEFI) and I have had many buggy firmware problems with UEFI. It might be that your UEFI firmware is buggy (like many of my systems) and that might be what you are hitting.

Zerock: do you have an EFI system partition on both disks?

For example I have three HP z210 workstations that should be identical, or at least very similar. ONE of them appears to handle UEFI okay and everything works there. The other two have buggy UEFI firmware and I have hassled with them endlessly. One of them I can boot Legacy BIOS mode and so that's the solution there. The other one is endlessly trouble no matter what I try with it.

i doubt this is a firmware issue, booting from the second disk with the first disk removed is identical to just booting from a single disk

+1 for ivy's question to check the partitioning on both disks.

the partition layout is identical across both disks

as for the contents, I haven't looked

if I remove the first disk, it's just going to the EFI firmware settings

Zerock: mount the efi partition on both disks, are the contents the same? they should both have efi/boot/bootx64.efi

I am just going to hint that "sysctl machdep.bootmethod" reports the method the system is currently booting. Because that has sometimes been confusing.

well this is less than ideal

I can't get it to boot into either disk now

hmm, okay something strange has happened

just booted into the installer again; I'd done this previously for some probing

but now the resolution has changed from what it had been before

oh... "first disk" is no longer appearing as a device in the installer

I think it may be dead

I was doing all this because I was afraid it was getting close to failing anyway

I really hate dealing with UEFI booting. If I can use Legacy BIOS then I use it. Except... AFAIK there is no NVMe support available for Legacy BIOS and one must use UEFI for NVMe support. And of course one wants NVMe support if you have it.

okay well assuming that disk is toast, what can I do from the installer to check and prepare the other disk for booting?

The other thing about UEFI is that it requires two things that are separate to work together. One is that the EFI partition must have the configuration upon it. One is that the motherboard EFI vars in non-volatile memory are configured to boot that EFI System Partition. Which means that with UEFI one can't just move disks around from machine to machine because the other half (EFI Vars) won't match.

EFI Vars are managed using efibootmgr and "efibootmgr -v" on a system that has booted UEFI should print out the EFI Vars information.

And you have asked a perfectly reasonable question. Which I as well have struggled with. I am not qualified to answer because I have myself been flummoxed by the problem too.

Read through wiki.freebsd.org/MasonLoringBliss/ZFSandGELIbyHAND and see if that provides enough hints to understand the problem and set things up.

Zerock: reviews.freebsd.org/D42150

i'm still scrolled up so don't shoot me yet if someone already pointed that out

erm... can't even get to the EFI menu now... maybe this mobo is dying actually

Yikes

oh. well, independent of hardware failures, the installer does kinda fuck this up today

oh wait, no it made it

but it showed a post code for a bit which I hadn't seen before

I've actually finally got a RPI5 working fairly nicely on a microsd NVMe ZFS hybrid setup.. If I could get the i2c and dt fan control working I'd be a bit happier howeverI have a decent workaround for now

kevans, Is that merged and active? Or still pending merge? I don't know how to tell such a thing. But that issue is spot on the problem.

pending

imp@ has an action item to get it straightened out before 15.0/14.4

okay back in the installer but still not seeing first disk. lemme read some

okay yeah this issue seems to be what I'm looking at. EFI partition exists, but I can't mount it. I get "invalid argument"

I assume that's what I'd expect if there's not actually a file system on it

Zerock: is that only for the second disk? the first should mount fine (or you wouldn't be able to boot)

yes, for the second disk sorry

first disk was fine, at least up until now where it seems to be dead

okay, i suggest running newfs_msdos on the efi partition (make sure you get the right one...) then edit /etc/fstab so both partitions are mounted at e.g. /boot/efi0 and /boot/efi1. then copy efi0 to efi1

er

then every time you upgrade, remember you have to copy the new loader to both partitions (that's why i mount both, it's harder to forget)

okay what are you suggesting I use for the source exactly? My original "first disk" appears to be dead; I can't even see it

oh, ok

in that case just newfs_msdos the new one, mount it, then copy /boot/loader.efi to /boot/efi/efi/boot/bootx64.efi

that's assuming you mounted it on /boot/efi; the DOS path should be \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI

okay, that's done. Now do I need to set up anything on this freebsd-boot type partition?

no, as long as it has the right partition type (efi) and bootx64.efi exists, the firmware should boot from it

oh, wait, you mean the tiny boot partition

yeah the lil 512k one

uh, i'm not sure, i normally select the installer option that doesn't create that, it isn't needed for UEFI boot

well maybe it's not necessary then

let's send it

i think as long as you're not trying to do a CSM boot, it doesn't matter what's in the boot partition

not showing up as a bootable device

is there a flag I need to set somewhere?

not apart from the partition type... can you go back into the installer, mount the efi partition on /mnt and show the output of 'gpart show' and 'find /mnt'?

also, check the firmware is set to prefer UEFI (or UEFI only)

it's not set to UEFI only

it wouldn't hurt to set that although i doubt it's the problem

I don't have a good way to get command output to you besides typing it back by hand

so what exactly are you looking for?

well, the efi partition should look like this:

=> 40 1875384928 ada0 GPT (894G)

40 532480 1 efi (260M)

i.e. type is "efi"

and find should show /mnt/boot/efi/bootx64.efi

yes, that's what I have

I think the 512 KB partition is a legacy thing from before 12-RELEASE

you used to have it even with UEFI if you ran ZFS

and then the boot loader got the ability to chain into zroot? something like that

I am running zfs, and I think this system was a 14.2 install

may have been 14.3, though

it's only a couple of months old

iirc if you have a 512 KB partition, it means you installed FreeBSD in CSM/legacy boot mode with GPT partitioning

maybe so

the 512 KB partition protects MBR and the like

but would I still expect to have an efi partition?

and would I also expect the other disk in the mirror to not be bootable?

legacy boot process does not use the EFI loader but the installer has options to do either or both

the default installer option is to support both CSM and UEFI, so it creates the efi partition but also puts freebsd-boot there

hmm

but the boot partition should be ignore when booting from UEFI

if you're booting in legacy mode, you need to install the legacy loader into the boot sector

and it should be done for all disks in the array

if it is a zpool that is

I forget how GEOM mirror over entire drives works but I doubt you use GEOM

Zerock: see the man page for gptzfsboot for GPT legacy

the EXAMPLES section tells you what to do

okay I do see an EFI variable that points to the old disk

so perhaps I just need to add a new one

(or modify this one)

with UEFI your BIOS should just let you choose a boot device; if it does not see any, you are doing something wrong

if I have mount.devfs in a jail's jail.conf, does that imply allow.mount & allow.mount.devfs? Because it seems to work...

Zerock: efibootmgr should work if you booted in UEFI

yep, just did it with efibootmgr, about to attempt boot

yeah, neither of these disks are appearing as boot options in the firmware menu

and setting that variable doesn't seem to have worked

efibootmgr should theoretically show you the boot options and order

it does

well it does show me something anyway; as for whether or not that's accurate to the firmware's behavior...

aight, well let's try legacy I guess

btw [19:42:39] <ivy> and find should show /mnt/boot/efi/bootx64.efi

interesting but I do not have that

probably because my system was installed as 13.x, not 11.x

I have /boot/efi/efi/freebsd/loader.efi instead

my other freebsd machine has both of those

err remove the /boot/efi prefix

Zerock: what do you see in `efibootmgr -v` btw for that old FreeBSD drive?

mine's +Boot000B* FreeBSD HD(1,GPT,3cbec609-fed7-11ed-b6c4-9f14b296b049,0x28,0x82000)/File(\efi\freebsd\loader.efi) \ gpt/efiboot0:/efi/freebsd/loader.efi /boot/efi//efi/freebsd/loader.efi

it was similar to that, yes

okay so even after installing gptzfsboot I still don't see this as a bootable disk

do you guys think it would be useful if freebsd can boot off a vhd file directly from a disk

since vhd and similar formats support thin provisioning and snapshot

that sounds like a better zfs boot environment for me since you can move around files easier

jmw: no, but I'm reasonably certain that mount.devfs is mounting it from outside of the jail rather than inside

hmm, now this is strange... if I look in my EFI menu at all SATA devices, the second disk is present (i.e. it doesn't say "not detected") but its name is blank, and it's reading 0.0GB as the size...

yet in freebsd it works fine

I did also just do a firmware update in case that was the problem

With 15 being in 15.0-PRERELEASE does that mean that ports are currently unavailable or did I miss a step?

Its complaining about a mismatch currently with the mk file

Tenkawa: ports works fine on name, -PRERELEASE is just a name change. if ports doesn't like it that would be a ports bug... can you show the error?

s/on name/on main

sure just a sec

make

make: "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk" line 1205: UNAME_r (15.0-PRERELEASE) and OSVERSION (1403000) do not agree on major version number.

make: stopped in /usr/ports/security/nmap

It still thinks I'm on 14.3 for some reason

uname -a

FreeBSD rpibsd 15.0-PRERELEASE FreeBSD 15.0-PRERELEASE #0 main-b81fd3fc8b20: Sat Aug 16 15:33:51 EDT 2025 root@rpibsd:/usr/obj/usr/src/arm64.aarch64/sys/GENERIC arm64

that was after a full buildworld and buildkernel

what does 'uname -KU' say?

uname -KU

1500060 1403000

you haven't installed the new world after building it

`freebsd-version -ku` would give human readable version IDs

hmm..that would seem to be.. however I am fairly sure it did... let me try it agai

n

you could also check 'file /bin/ls'

the dates look wring too

er wrong.. so I agree

uh, that kinda looks like you booted into a new kernel, but didn't `make installworld` yet

which you'll need to do

No.. I know... something must've went wrong and wasn't caught

it wouldn't hurt to run it again

rtprio: I updated 3 other boxes yesterday.. this is the only one that broke.. thats why I was surprised...

I think I know what happened.. It was running excessively slow because I had it on microsd originally and not a nvme and I think I just oopsed and forgot to run the last step befre transferring the media

Ok that look better.. Thanks everyone... now to move the rest of things I can to the nvme zfs and off the slow microsd..

off the WHAT?!

you have zfs on a microsd?

that is a balla move right there.

voy4g3r2: No.. The OS is currently UFS on a microsd...

sdcard array zfs sounds entertaining

I'm migrating what I can to the NVMe I have on this tiny little thing

Its just a RPI5

so its only a PCIe Gen 3.0 (8 GT/sec)

better than microsd though so if I can offload to it... the more I can get off the microsd the better

I've already moved my build area and a fair bit of the dynamic io to it..

is zfs 2.4 in 15.0-CURRENT?

i don't think i'm going to upgrade until it's RELEASE. i was just curious.

2.3

Macer: but looks like it will have it in the final release

guys do u use freebsd for home or only for work

Macer: it has openzfs commit 8302b6e32, which is from ~1 week ago and identifies itself as 2.3.99. 2.4 doesn't seem to be released yet

okay I finally have my system booting again. Now I want to grow the zfs partition on a new disk to add to the mirror, but I want to make sure it's aligned the way the installer would have done it. Is that alignment documented somewhere or otherwise well known?

i wanna run a binary on servers but without the binary being stored on the servers. so was thinking i'd make some code to, on startup, download binary from distro url to a ram backed tmp fs, run binary from there, then when server reboots or shuts down binary goes poof. any probs?

ivy: I think I narrowly evaded a disaster btw. Even the second drive appears to be having firmware issues now. I was able to save it by copying its data to a new drive using a dedicated appliance, but it does not properly identify itself. I lost both disks in the same day.

i'm looking for cumulative Slackware64-current/testing sourcecode... wanting to upgrade to linux-6.15.10 using Patrick Volkerding's SlackBuild for earlier 6.15 but can't find this. I can't test 6.16 on this PC yet because ZFSonLinux is for 6.15 at latest...

darwin: wrong channel?

oops; sorry

i'm exhausted today

if freebsd has KDE6 would you recommend it, or maybe just its programs (Dolphin, KATE, Konsole) in XFCE or E or TWM or something?

slackware is awesome.. that was my first distribution into this world.. disk a,b,c,n for the win!

back when overclocking cpus were a thing, you had 8 megs of ram and a 1.2 gig hard drive.. partitioned with windows 95

all done on a 33.6k modem!!

FreeBSD UNIX was actually my first in 1997 when still called UNIX in official documentation. Then the college computer science (CS) department chair, and the system administrator (sysadmin) had us install most/all of NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Slackware, Debian, RedHat, SUSE but there weren't many other big ones at the time; that was probably all. I tried Slackware at home and didn't know where EDIT.COM was so was 'distribution-hopping' (distro) through

early-to-mid '0s

the world opened up with comptuer shows and i could buy the walnut creek slackware cds.. i did not know about the BSDs till about 3 years ago :)

all thanks to my synology dying and it was easier to recover the data on the disks.. on freebsd over linux... even though the synology was linux

voy4g3r2: Slackware was my first Linux too although I had used Unix for some time...

my first Linux was Watchtower Linux, and i've never met anyone else who's used or even heard of it

That's like me and NCR SVR4...people have "heard" of it but so few I know that have used it...

I used it ono microchannel hardware

s/ono/on

first UNIX was HP-UX on a big HP risc box

voy4g3r2: Yeah I did that for years....

learned some neat stuff.. made some shell scripts to be able to send raw printer output to computers through terminal emulation

which then i learned perl to parse the thousands of pages of output in minutes instead of hours

Tenkawa: i've heard of NCR UNIX! but i know absolutely nothing about it, even what hardware it ran on

ivy: yeah I worked for NCR long long ago.

Wow memories. My first unix was a 68K TRS-80 (TRS-6000?) ncoast plublix access unix.

i think i know of it because it's one of those that comes up in "This software is tested in:" docs in (very) old software, sort of like Dynix