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From: Mikael Karpberg <karpen@ocean.campus.luth.se>
Message-Id: <199609231424.QAA03966@ocean.campus.luth.se>
Subject: Re: Boot manager problems
To: hackers@freebsd.org
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 16:24:22 +0200 (MET DST)
In-Reply-To: <199609222330.TAA00676@elmer.ct.picker.com> from Randall Hopper at "Sep 22, 96 07:30:33 pm"
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Randall Hopper:
[..SNIP..]
>      One solution, which I believe is what you ended up with, is to fdisk
> with DOS, and put FreeBSD in a slice.  DOS always leaves the first head
> (typically the first 63 sectors, on a respectable-size hard drive) free
> except for sector 1 which of course is the MBR, so all boot managers that
> install there should work fine, without stomping on your FreeBSD and other
> file systems.  Another alternative is to fdisk with FreeBSD, still using
> slices, but make sure not to start the first partition before sector 64 (so
> you can use any boot manager).

Umm... no. I think. :-)  I mean, I used the whole disc, except for some 63
or so sectors. But I wanted it to be a real partition that DOS for example
would see and recognize as a non dos partition. But when I tried to boot,
booteasy wasn't very cooperative. Until I had installed a dos partition
on it first, which somehow got FreeBSD's fdisk to adjust it's values, or
something *shrug*  It seems kinda bad that if it's the case that you need
to offset the start of the partition, the install will not at LEAST warn
and say "Are you sure you don't want it like this instead? If you don't
change this, it will not boot". There should be a check so that the
partitioning is ok to boot from. Such things is nothing a user should have
to know. I for example feel very comfortable in unix and handle most things
there, but I don't know sh*t about the lowlevel workings of the booteasy,
UFS, etc. And I shouldn't have to, to install FreeBSD, and get it to boot.
Anyone who does not agree, please raise your hand. :-)

>      By the way, you might find:
> 
>      http://www.freebsd.org/tutorials/multios/multios.html
> 
> useful.  It gives some more details, assuming this was your problem.

Multios? I don't have anything that is not FreeBSD on my two disks.
(I installed only on one, the other one was my old disk, which I later
 mounted under /usr/local/old_root, to be able to set up the new system
 faster.)

   /Mikael