Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 17 Mar 2020 16:17:31 +0200
From:      Toomas Soome <tsoome@me.com>
To:        Matthew Seaman <matthew@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: what 3rd party boot mgr is required to boot multiple freebsd versions?
Message-ID:  <C8D6AD74-694D-4D3D-AE76-5100E2E2ED14@me.com>
In-Reply-To: <059a7ecf-4ef8-0903-d2ee-debb8bb108b4@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <f76b211bb27e5a0d9126090766378858@udns.ultimatedns.net> <7c00489f-b9a2-2cc9-dd6b-dae600019099@snakeoilproductions.net> <059a7ecf-4ef8-0903-d2ee-debb8bb108b4@FreeBSD.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help


> On 17. Mar 2020, at 15:51, Matthew Seaman <matthew@FreeBSD.org> wrote:
>=20
> On 17/03/2020 12:58, Florian Limberger wrote:
>> On 16.03.20 23:33, Chris wrote:
>>=20
>>> For the record. I'm *only* using FreeBSD in this situation. I
>>> only mentioned Windows above, for the use of it's boot manager.
>>=20
>> If you only use FreeBSD, and also use ZFS, you might find beadm[1]
>> interesting.
>>=20
>> [1]: https://www.freshports.org/sysutils/beadm
>>=20
>=20
> Did you know that the system now comes with bectl(8) which is very
> similar to beadm?  As far as I can tell, the biggest difference is =
that
> if you have more than one ZFS in your boot environment then:
>=20
>    beadm create FOO
>=20
> is actually equivalent to
>=20
>    bectl create -r FOO
>=20
> ie. turning on the recursive functionality in bectl.
>=20
> However, this is not really what the OP was asking about.  As I
> understand it, they were looking for something that would allow =
choosing
> between several independent installations of different versions of
> FreeBSD, rather than having multiple environments in the same
> installation.  You can achieve pretty much the same effect though --
> there is a boot menu option to switch between BEs.  You would have to
> manage any ported software between the different OS versions, perhaps =
by
> including /usr/local and /var/db/pkg are both parts of your BEs.
>=20
> 	Cheers,
>=20
> 	Matthew
>=20

BE=E2=80=99s can solve some scenarios. However, it is easy to add =
support for few more. The current BE menu is populated automatically =
from the zfs. However, it is also simple task to add a file parser to it =
and read menu file with entries with different pool (we only need to =
activate such entries same way as it is currently done for =E2=80=9Cnormal=
=E2=80=9D BE, or entries with chain load). Read this menu file first and =
zfs BE list after, and you have BE menu with manual and automatic =
entries. Can be implemented within few hours.=20

rgds,
Toomas






Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?C8D6AD74-694D-4D3D-AE76-5100E2E2ED14>