Zpool-upgrade loader.efi fail

I recently bought a Sony Walkman android device, which I hoped would permit me to use an app to control my Deco S4 wifi devices.  The wifi hardware was added in hopes of improving local wifi from a single Xfinity device and in a more secure way by connecting via my OPNsense box.  Once I solved the wifi device app issue, I still had the Sony Walkman for audio.

Perhaps foolishly, I wanted to use larger better quality flac files, and knowing I still had quite a large number of CDs to run through ripperX, I tried to change my vdev to better compression.  What seemed to me as being better compression algorithms were unavailable to me because my zfs needed an update.  I had done as many as two updates in the past, one which switched me to 'feature flags' and each time was warned about compatibility but never had an issue.

Without any further investigation, assuming that it would be just as easy a process as in the past, so I upgraded zfs and then changed the compression of the vdev for my music files.  Everything ran fine, no issues.  Later, I was playing minetest and after some time in the midst of what I was attempting on the minetest server, my display and mouse, and pc froze up.  There has been an issue with something somewhere which has caused me a panic and reboot, so all I had once more was the inconvenient interruption.  This time it didn't reboot itself, just seemed to remain frozen, so I rebooted.

This is when I discovered that something was wrong.  It started the boot but before it got very far I was greeted with errors including "ZFS: unsupported feature: com.klarasystems:vdev_zaps_v2" and mention that it couldn't find any bootable drives.  Luckily there was a specific term which I could search online for more information: klarasystems:vdev_zaps_v2.

One search result was FreeBSD forum post 14-0-release-zfs-features-gotcha.91085 but I also looked at the 14.0 release notes, and /usr/src/UPDATING:

20160708:
	The stable/11 branch has been created from head@r302406.

After branch N is created, entries older than the N-2 branch point are removed
from this file. After stable/14 is branched and current becomes FreeBSD 15,
entries older than stable/12 branch point will be removed from current's
UPDATING file.

COMMON ITEMS:

	General Notes
	-------------
	Sometimes, obscure build problems are the result of environment
	poisoning.  This can happen because the make utility reads its
	environment when searching for values for global variables.  To run
	your build attempts in an "environmental clean room", prefix all make
	commands with 'env -i '.  See the env(1) manual page for more details.
	Occasionally a build failure will occur with "make -j" due to a race
	condition.  If this happens try building again without -j, and please
	report a bug if it happens consistently.

	When upgrading from one major version to another it is generally best to
	upgrade to the latest code in the currently installed branch first, then
	do an upgrade to the new branch. This is the best-tested upgrade path,
	and has the highest probability of being successful.  Please try this
	approach if you encounter problems with a major version upgrade.  Since
	the stable 4.x branch point, one has generally been able to upgrade from
	anywhere in the most recent stable branch to head / current (or even the
	last couple of stable branches). See the top of this file when there's
	an exception.

	The update process will emit an error on an attempt to perform a build
	or install from a FreeBSD version below the earliest supported version.
	When updating from an older version the update should be performed one
	major release at a time, including running `make delete-old` at each
	step.

	When upgrading a live system, having a root shell around before
	installing anything can help undo problems. Not having a root shell
	around can lead to problems if pam has changed too much from your
	starting point to allow continued authentication after the upgrade.

	This file should be read as a log of events. When a later event changes
	information of a prior event, the prior event should not be deleted.
	Instead, a pointer to the entry with the new information should be
	placed in the old entry. Readers of this file should also sanity check
	older entries before relying on them blindly. Authors of new entries
	should write them with this in mind.

	ZFS notes
	---------
	When upgrading the boot ZFS pool to a new version (via zpool upgrade),
	always follow these three steps:

	1) recompile and reinstall the ZFS boot loader and boot block
	(this is part of "make buildworld" and "make installworld")

	2) update the ZFS boot block on your boot drive (only required when
	doing a zpool upgrade):

	When booting on x86 via BIOS, use the following to update the ZFS boot
	block on the freebsd-boot partition of a GPT partitioned drive ada0:
		gpart bootcode -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i $N ada0
	The value $N will typically be 1.  For EFI booting, see EFI notes.

	3) zpool upgrade the root pool. New bootblocks will work with old
	pools, but not vice versa, so they need to be updated before any
	zpool upgrade.

	Non-boot pools do not need these updates.

	EFI notes
	---------

	There are two locations the boot loader can be installed into. The
	current location (and the default) is \efi\freebsd\loader.efi and using
	efibootmgr(8) to configure it. The old location, that must be used on
	deficient systems that don't honor efibootmgr(8) protocols, is the
	fallback location of \EFI\BOOT\BOOTxxx.EFI. Generally, you will copy
	/boot/loader.efi to this location, but on systems installed a long time
	ago the ESP may be too small and /boot/boot1.efi may be needed unless
	the ESP has been expanded in the meantime.

	Recent systems will have the ESP mounted on /boot/efi, but older ones
	may not have it mounted at all, or mounted in a different
	location. Older arm SD images with MBR used /boot/msdos as the
	mountpoint. The ESP is a MSDOS filesystem.

	The EFI boot loader rarely needs to be updated. For ZFS booting,
	however, you must update loader.efi before you do 'zpool upgrade' the
	root zpool, otherwise the old loader.efi may reject the upgraded zpool
	since it does not automatically understand some new features.

	See loader.efi(8) and uefi(8) for more details.

and then to the manpage for loader.efi, specifically:

EXAMPLES
   Updating loader.efi on the ESP
       The  following  examples	 shows	how to install a new loader.efi	on the
       ESP.

       First, find the partition of type "efi":

	     # gpart list | grep -Ew '(Name|efi)'
	     1.	Name: nvd0p1
		type: efi
	     2.	Name: nvd0p2
	     3.	Name: nvd0p3
	     4.	Name: nvd0p4
	     1.	Name: nvd0

       The name	of the ESP on this system is nvd0p1.

       Second, let's mount the ESP, copy loader.efi to	the  special  location
       reserved	for FreeBSD EFI	loaders, and unmount once finished:

	     # mount_msdosfs /dev/nvd0p1 /boot/efi
	     # cp /boot/loader.efi /boot/efi/efi/freebsd/loader.efi
	     # umount /boot/efi

SEE ALSO
       loader(8), uefi(8)

Since I had experienced similar issues with my box which meant I had to adjust whatwas on the hard drive, I knew that I would need bootable media so that I could reach the hard drive.  This is what became a more significant and time-consuming problem, at least partly due to my own stubborn foolishness.  I had a number of micro sd cards and a usb reader.  Out of three which had the potential to function as I needed, only one had an old NomadBSD installed upon it.  My mistake was that I insisted upon upgrading it from 12.x to 14.0 which ran into storage constraints and then breaking it from its normal startup process and eventually unable to boot at all.

Later I noticed an old Kingston Digital DataTraveler SE9 64GB USB 2.0 which I discovered has FreeNAS installed.  I could boot it and get to shell which allowed me to get the img file.  It was good enough for some attempts to create a bootable micro sd card but it eventually would fail too quickly during an ftp transfer or dd write, so that I had to find another option.  I was pretty sure that I had some cdroms or dvds which have some kind of FreeBSD, so once I found my cache, I decided to use a PC-BSD 8.2rc2 dvd.

This is when I was finally tired of the whole process and possibly more rested or something, so I actually, after a chunk of two days of attempts, finally made progress.  I booted the PC-BSD disc and after some tries for the GUI, I realized I only truly needed a shell.  From the shell, I was able to mount my target micro sd card which I used to store the downloaded (via ftp -a download.freebsd.org) img file.  I could also format an SSD which I bought more than 5 years ago in a group of four for adding zfs cache devices to my box (obviously still not accomplished).  I shifted the img file to the SSD so I could dd it to the micro sd card.  Once I had the FreeBSD 14.0 installer on the micro sd card, I booted it and began the process of the repair.

My initial plan was to first test the process by an update of the loader.efi on the micro sd card but got stymied.  I followed the steps above (in the loader.efi manpage example).  I discovered that the appropriate partition was ada2p1, which I mounted to /boot/efi and then found that there was no /boot/efi/efi/freebsd path.  What I had was /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTxxx.EFI which I left alone.  Instead I created the needed freebsd directory in /boot/efi/EFI.  Once the path was setup, I could copy the loader.efi into the correct location.

This was my very first ever experience with this sort of repair or upgrade, so I was not sure of success until my reboot.  At some point during or shortly after this repair, I decided to properly install FreeBSD 14.0 onto the SSD as a failsafe against future similar problems, I kept the micro sd card as the FreeBSD 14.0 installer.  I used the SSD using the presently unavailable cables2go version of Generic-Adapter-Converter-Optical-External.  Aside from all of the above, I was able to connect to my local network with my Sony Walkman to look for answers and help.  If I can keep my Walkman able to use for such emergencies, this may be an easier method than keeping an entire network and FreeBSD installed on a box functioning, all I will likely need is wifi and access.  I have no plan to ever modify the Walkman away from its functional install.

Definite relief after I was able to properly boot up my box and use it on my last of a series of three days off from work.  I hope that you update your loader.efi BEFORE you upgrade zfs so that you can avoid the excitement of doing the repair above.