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To: Peter Schmiedeskamp <pschmied@yahoo.com>
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From: Lowell Gilbert <freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org>
Date: 10 Feb 2004 10:10:42 -0500
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Subject: Re: Booting non-freebsd partition from loader(8)?
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Peter Schmiedeskamp <pschmied@yahoo.com> writes:

> Hello, I have a question that google seems to be
> unable to answer.
> 
> My question: Is it possible to boot from a non-freebsd
> partition after loader(8) is already in memory? 
> Ultimately, I would like to see the familiar boot menu
> (where Chuck gives me all sorts of options such as
> booting with and without ACPI support) with another
> option "Boot Windows from partition X."
> 
> I understand this is a bit of an odd usage, so I'll
> explain why I would like to do this rather than the
> standard hard disk "F1 DOS", "F2 FreeBSD" method.
> 
> I'm using a tftp-enabled pxeboot that boots a small
> MFS-based freebsd.  I would like to give users the
> option of booting from the harddrive or booting from
> the network.  PC Bios screens are unfortunately rather
> inconsistent and cumbersome to navigate.  So, I would
> like to always get a consistent boot menu from the
> network.  Getting this from the network allows me to
> update this boot menu centrally.
> 
> So, any thoughts?  Is it possible to chain load
> another operating system in this fashion?

It's probably possible to write loader code to do that, but I don't
believe that such code exists now.