Re: Advice for new travelling server: Intel Z690 chipset?

[Johan Stenstam <johani%ihren.org@localhost>]

Hi Martin,

> On 10 May 2023, at 14:17, Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 12:56:57PM +0200, Johan Stenstam wrote:
> 
>> I'm a dinosaur from the pre-UEFI era, all I know is 'BIOS boot'. How
>> do I find that out?
> 
> sysctl machdep.bootmethod
> 
> will tell you.

Aha, great. And the answer was:

bash-5.2# sysctl machdep.bootmethod
machdep.bootmethod = UEFI
bash-5.2# 

> It is completely unrelated to GPT vs. MBR, NetBSD can work with
> GPT both on BIOS and UEFI booting machines.

That’s what I suspected.

> The installer (w/o asking the user) always picks the method it was booted
> itself. If UEFI, you will have an additional partiton (the "ESP" aka Efi
> System Partition) with msdos file system. This is where the UEFI bootloader
> binaries live.

Yes, I saw that when reading docs. But that prompts the obvious followup question, especially given Matthias question to me about trying BIOS-booting my system. Is there any way to change from UEFI boot to BIOS boot without having to jeopardise my boot disk? And, preferably, also a way to change back.

I’m a little bit handicapped by only having one, single disk. I bought two, specifically to avoid being so dependent on one disk, but when doing that I always buy different brands, in the hope of not having them fail at the same time. Unfortunately the second M.2 disk simply did not fit into the box as it was too thick. I’ve ordered a replacement, but it will not arrive for a day or two.

Johan