From owner-freebsd-bugs Thu Jun 15 07:10:37 1995 Return-Path: bugs-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id HAA17744 for bugs-outgoing; Thu, 15 Jun 1995 07:10:37 -0700 Received: from lambda.demon.co.uk (lambda.demon.co.uk [158.152.17.124]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with ESMTP id HAA17716 ; Thu, 15 Jun 1995 07:10:28 -0700 Received: (from paul@localhost) by lambda.demon.co.uk (8.6.11/8.6.9) id PAA00290; Thu, 15 Jun 1995 15:08:46 +0100 From: Paul Richards Message-Id: <199506151408.PAA00290@lambda.demon.co.uk> Subject: Re: originally a newsgroup post, but news server here isn't working To: rwatson@clark.net (Robert Watson) Date: Thu, 15 Jun 1995 15:08:10 +0100 (BST) Cc: bde@zeta.org.au, jkh@freebsd.org, bugs@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: from "Robert Watson" at Jun 15, 95 07:46:53 am Reply-to: paul@freebsd.org X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UK-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Length: 1726 Sender: bugs-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk In reply to Robert Watson who said > > > > a) no boot manager installed -- for soe reason that didn't happen during > sysinstall. > > b) a bootable freebsd partition, wd(a,1) if anything knew to look there. > > c) a FreeBSD boot loader on floppy that can be told to point to wd(a,1) > > So here's my question ;). Is there any post-installation way to get > FreeBSD to put in the boot manager, or is that only available from the > installation program, which has a nasty tendancy towards overwriting ones > root partition entries if run with any decisions made (eg., to install > the boot manager, you have to install root.flp, as far as I can see, and > that zaps my /etc tree (also on wd(a,1)). Yes, if you play around a bit. 1) Run sysinstall :-) 2) Go to the mbr (fdisk) partition editor, DON'T change any partition sizes. Just mark your primary FreeBSD partition as bootable. 3) Go to the disklabel editor, don't change anything other than re-assigning the mount points. That should mean that all the partitions are marked read-only. 4) Proceed with the installation, it will ask about installing a boot manager -- choose one. 5) It will then fsck your disks, you should be able to abort the installation at this point (hit ctrl-C) before it does anything else and all that will have happened is that the partition will have been marked bootable and a boot manager will have been installed. This isn't a guarantee but I had similar problems and something along these lines worked for me. -- Paul Richards, Bluebird Computer Systems. FreeBSD core team member. Internet: paul@FreeBSD.org, http://www.freebsd.org/~paul Phone: 0370 462071 (Mobile), +44 1222 457651 (home)