Is 11.2 using GRUB?

[cpts]

I was having BTX boot issues with the 11.2 betas and RC’s when I have an external drive connected at boot. The workaround was to boot with the drive unplugged and then plug it in after boot up (I’ve submitted a bug). I’ve upgraded from 11.1 U6 to 11.2 final expecting the same problem only to find that GRUB is the bootloader which doesn’t have this issue.

Is 11.2 still using GRUB? Based on the release notes I was expecting BTX.

 

[kdragon75]

Odd, I thought they moved to the BSD loader...

 

[colmconn]

When u upgraded from 11.1-u6 to 11.2 the first boot may have been with grub. My experience when I upgraded from 11.1-u6 to 11.2-rc2 was that the first boot into 11.2-rc2 was with grub but part of the boot process installed the FreeBSD boot loader. When I upgraded to 11.2 yesterday grub was no where to be seen

 

[Mlovelace]

11.2 now uses BSD bootloader, as the BSD bootloader now supports ZFS.

 

[Adrian]

I can confirm that the second reboot within the 11.1-U6 to 11.2-RELEASE upgrade used grub, that the boot loader was installed as part of that boot, and that a subsequent reboot used the FreeBSD boot loader.

 

[cpts]

I can confirm, after a reboot it appears to be booting with BTX. And for what it’s worth, disabling legacy USB support solved my booting issues.

 

[blanchet]

Disabling Legacy USB support in the BIOS can be very dangerous:

I have just disabled Legacy USB support in the BIOS of my QNAP server (TS-EC1680U-RP).
It was a very poor idea for this server:

• it has not solved my issue with BTX
• I cannot enter the BIOS again because the USB keyboard does not work anymore
• There is no PS2 ports
• Unfortunately there is no Clear_CMOS jumper on the motherboard
• Removing the CMOS battery has no effect
• it means that I have bricked the motherboard. :-(

 

[blanchet]

Even if my server is out-of-warranty, the QNAP support has send me a procedure to recover my blocked BIOS

• create a FreeDOS SATA disk with Rufus (RMPrepUSB does not work)
• remove FDSETUP directory to free space to copy the BIOS image and the FPT.EXE tool that was provided by QNAP support
• edit FDCONFIG.SYS to run the flashing procedure instead of the FreeDOS installer
• Unplug all disks, including the mSATA disks
• Plug the SATA FreeDOS disk in bay 1
• Poweron the server

After few minutes, the BIOS has been updated with default settings, so my server is back !

During this adventure, I have also discovered that BTX works if I remove all the data disks during the boot.