On a RELENG_6 system, it seems that gpt partition is invisible until a ‘gpt show’ command is issued. So, currently, I have to put ‘gpt show da0’ in rc.early (yes, that’s dirty).
After checking geom_gpt.c, it seems that its start function does nothing on RELENG_6. But, in -CURRENT, it does something. So, my guess is on -CURRENT it is fine. Need to ask some experts.
Recently, I bought a ThinkPad X60 with Intel Core 2 Duo CPU. Though, I have an external USB CD-Rom, I decided to try PXE installation. I know this long time ago, but never try it out.
In short, you need a DHCP+NFS+tftp server to start. All the tricks are documented here. If you have NAT running on the server, disable it. Otherwise, some funny things happen. PXE installation is not that hard as I thought. Speaking of PXE, I think there is a project about PXE bundle installer. Hope we can see it soon 