Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 19:03:01 -0500 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Michael O'Henly" <michael@tenzo.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Question about installing two instances of FreeBSD on same machine... Message-ID: <15097.55989.242733.950177@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <59715524@toto.iv>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Michael O'Henly <michael@tenzo.com> types: > I'm a new FreeBSD user I have two hard drives. On one drive I've installed > FreeBSD 4.3 with the default boot manager. The second drive is not being used. > > I'd like to run a second instance of FreeBSD on the second drive. The idea is > that I could experiment there without worrying about screwing things up and > just reinstall when necessary. What's "the default boot manager"? Boot0? Or one that just boots the active partition? If the latter, you'll need to install boot0 - see the boot0config man page - on the first disk. > I _think_ I should boot from the 4.3 CD, format and install a system on the > second drive, and not install a boot manager. Then I should add the second > system to the boot manager's config file. You need a boot block on the second drive. If you install a standard mbr - see the fdisk man page for info on how to do that - going to the second disk from boot0 on the first drive will just boot freebsd. If you install boot0 on the second disk, you'll get a second boot0 menu, so you can change your mind and go back to the first disk. > The part where I'm sketchy is how to make /usr/home/michael accessible from > both instances and how to mount directories from the first instance when I > need them. You need to mount the file system that /usr/home/michael resides on on your second system. If it's /usr/home or /usr/home/michael, you can probably mount it there. If it's on /usr, you'll need to mount that as something like /altusr, and create a symlink from /usr/home/michael on the second disk to /altusr/home/michael on the first disk. While we're talking about sharing file systems, you can use the swap partition that's already on your first disk as swap for the system on the second disk. It should work fine, but I haven't tried sharing swap partitions across a drive like that. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?15097.55989.242733.950177>