Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 20:01:44 +0200 (SAST) From: Robert Nordier <rnordier@nordier.com> To: drosih@rpi.edu (Garance A Drosihn) Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Multiple versions of FreeBSD on one HDD Message-ID: <199908031801.UAA01402@m1-18-dbn.dial-up.net> In-Reply-To: <v04210103b3ccc6e725ab@[128.113.24.47]> from Garance A Drosihn at "Aug 3, 1999 01:24:15 pm"
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> By now the floppies for PowerBoot had come, so I tried
> installing that. I could now boot the HD, and PowerBoot can
> see the two partitions with freebsd installed (it even
> recognizes them as freebsd). Right now, my situation is
> that:
> - If I select WinNT at the PowerBoot menu, it comes up
> fine. Everything looks about as I'd expect.
> - If I select 2.2.8 at the PowerBoot menu, it comes up
> with one error message about "no /boot/loader", but
> then it comes right up in the 2.2.8 system. So this
> works fine, although it looks odd.
You're using the new boot blocks for 2.2.8, and these always try
to pass control to loader(8). To get rid of the message, create a
/boot.config file with the line
/kernel
in it.
> - If I select 3.2 at the PowerBoot menu, it comes up
> with two messages about "invalid partition", one about
> "no boot loader", and then it can't automatically boot
> up anything. The interesting thing is that I'm in
> the 2.2.8 bootloader at this point, not the 3.2 one.
> It seems to want to boot 'da(0,a)/kernel', but if I
> type in 'da(0,e)/kernel', then it boots up fine.
The problem here is a missing `a' partition. Seems like your
first partition on that slice is `e'. There's a one-line
patch to boot2 to get this working, but the standard version
only autoboots from the `a' partition.
> My last partition is meant for installing OpenBSD, but I
> wasn't ready to do that yet. Later I was talking with one
> of the other guys here, and I went to show him what I did
> by trying to do another freebsd install into that 4th
> partition. Much to my surprise, it won't *let* me install
> into that partition.
It's usually best to temporarily change fdisk partition types,
so that sysinstall sees no existing FreeBSD slice on the drive.
However, there may be other problems involved here as well.
> (note that I wanted to try PowerBoot because I also have a
> second hard disk, and I want to install Win98 on that one,
> along with BeOS and maybe some other OS's. It seemed to
> me that multi-disk situations could use something more than
> booteasy).
Actually booteasy can handle two drives, and boot0 (which replaced
booteasy in 3.1R) can handle more than that. However, the OSes
on the higher drives must be capable of booting from the
non-default drive. Most can do that -- even UnixWare -- though
not Windows, which ignores the drive number passed in to it.
So, for Windows, something that swaps drive letters is more
suitable.
> So, my guess is that my primary problem is that I have only a
> vague idea of what I'm doing... Where is a good point to start
> looking for a better idea? I tried searching the web site for
> "multi-boot", but that didn't turn up much. I have a number
> of questions from doing this:
> 1. why does the install turn my HD unbootable? (invalid
> partition table). I didn't ask it to re-fdisk anything,
> and I didn't ask for it to change my boot loader.
There are a number of possibilities, but one would have to look
at a copy of the broken MBR to be sure. (The most usual reason
for an "invalid partition table" message is multiple partitions
flagged as active, or partitions that use the new-style active
flag that is supported from Win95. This can be sorted out by
booting from floppy or CD-ROM and using fdisk.)
> 2. I have the BIOS option on so I can boot off larger
> hard disks, and indeed it seems I can boot to the
> first three partitions. Why can't I get to that final
> one?
You need to enable something more than the BIOS option. For
instance, for FreeBSD, you need to enable LBA support in the
boot blocks by means of a build option, and use boot0cfg(8)
to turn on "packet" support in boot0.
> 3. Can I get it so that booting off the third partition
> will smoothly boot into 3.2-stable?
Either patch boot2 or change to using an `a' partition.
> 4. given the rapidly-expanding size of HD's, would it be
> useful to support installs into DOS-style extended
> partitions? Or are they a problem which we're better
> off to avoid?
I think support for extended partitions is inevitable (it's now
the RedHat default), whether it really is a good idea or not.
Technically, it violates the IBM specification that deals with
fdisk partitions, though I'm not sure that matters very much.
It will break some older OS/2 device drivers, for instance,
though.
--
Robert Nordier
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