Re: Has anybody recently migrated from *cough* Linux to NetBSD?

[RVP <rvp%SDF.ORG@localhost>]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2022, Ottavio Caruso wrote:

> 1) Is it ok to put the / (root) of NetBSD at the end of the disk?

On spinning disks, xfer speeds near the end of a disk are slower, apart
from that, it should be OK.

> 2) Should the bootloader be installed on the newly created BSD
> partition? Or better install it onto a usb drive?

If you have UEFI, then you don't need to install the MBR-type bootloader
onto initial sectors on some partition. The UEFI BIOS should be capable
of booting the bootloader file (BOOTX64.EFI) directly, of you tell it
where it is located.

I have this layout:

$ gpart show -l ada0
=>       34  976773101  ada0  GPT  (466G)
         34       2014        - free -  (1.0M)
       2048     614400     1  EFI  (300M)
     616448    1228800     2  Basic data partition  (600M)
    1845248     262144     3  Microsoft reserved partition  (128M)
    2107392       8192     4  FreeBSD_EFI  (4.0M)
    2115584  104857600     7  FreeBSD_13.0  (50G)
  106973184    8390656     8  FreeBSD_swap  (4.0G)
  115363840      16384     9  NetBSD_EFI  (8.0M)
  115380224   41943040    10  NetBSD_9.2  (20G)
  157323264   10485760    11  NetBSD_swap  (5.0G)
  167809024   20971520    12  Linux filesystem  (10G)
  188780544      16384    13  OpenBSD_EFI  (8.0M)
  188796928   62914560    14  OpenBSD_6.9  (30G)
  251711488  104857600    15  NetBSD_test  (50G)
  356569088   19470336        - free -  (9.3G)
  376039424    8388608     5  Ubuntu_swap  (4.0G)
  384428032  592343040     6  Ubuntu_19.04  (282G)
  976771072       2063        - free -  (1.0M)

$

I've created EFI (ie. VFAT) partitions for each of the OSes, (except
Linux which uses the system EFI) and copied the *.EFI files (the EFI
bootloader) that come with each OS into `EFI\boot\' and then told my
BIOS about them (select a an EFI partition and the path within it
to the *.EFI files).

You can also just use the system EFI partition: create X:\NETBSD
and put the bootloader files there and inform BIOS.

-RVP