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How do I get FreeBSD multiboot to work with zfs

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I have one hard drive that I want to split into two separate FreeBSD OS installs and I'm running into a wall trying to figure out how to get it working. I followed Installing FreeBSD Root on ZFS using GPT in order to get a single OS up and running. There are no problems and everything works great. However, I do not know how to modify this in order to get a second OS up and running. I repeat from steps 2 onward to create the second partition and second zpool. Once I restart the FreeBSD boot menu does not show any boot options (i.e. no option for Boot Environment in option 8). If I do a zpool import it will show my second zpool that is a part of the other partition. I can even mount it using zpool import -R /mnt zroot2 and I can see the files. This is the point I'm quite lost. I can't figure out what I did to do. I looked into efibootmgr and bectl, but I'm not sure either is the right option. bectl seems to create Boot Environments from snapshots and not from other partitions. efibootmgr seems to need the file system mounted. Essentially my current progress is: - nda0p1 efi - nda0p2 freebsd-swap - nda0p3 freebsd-zfs (OS 1) - nda0p4 freebsd-zfs (OS 2) How do I get the FreeBSD boot manager to recognize the second OS? edit1: I tried installing twice through the UI and it did put another entry into the efibootmgr, but both options boot the newest install even though they point to separate files (\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.efi and \EFI\freebsd\loader.efi). The original install doesn't boot. edit2: I think the reason they both boot the same instance is they're both the same UI. You copy the efi into to the BOOTX64.efi location in the steps from above. From what I understand this efi automatically finds the FreeBSD instance. How does one create an EFI that points directly to an instance?
Asked by quickblueblur (199 rep)
Jul 28, 2025, 03:30 PM
Last activity: Jul 29, 2025, 05:22 PM