From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Dec 14 21:42:33 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F094816A41F for ; Wed, 14 Dec 2005 21:42:33 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from micahjon@ywave.com) Received: from smtpout1.ywave.com (ycomradius.yelmtel.com [216.227.100.60]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 068CC43D66 for ; Wed, 14 Dec 2005 21:42:30 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from micahjon@ywave.com) Received: (qmail 17998 invoked by uid 502); 14 Dec 2005 21:42:29 -0000 Received: from dsl28163.ywave.com (HELO ?192.168.1.65?) (micahjon@ywave.com@216.227.115.163) by 0 with SMTP; 14 Dec 2005 21:42:29 -0000 X-CLIENT-IP: 216.227.115.163 X-CLIENT-HOST: dsl28163.ywave.com Message-ID: <43A091C4.5010304@ywave.com> Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 13:42:28 -0800 From: Micah User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (X11/20051204) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: RW References: <43A031B1.2030105@supsi.ch> <43A04A05.3060504@ywave.com> <200512141829.36933.list-freebsd-2004@morbius.sent.com> In-Reply-To: <200512141829.36933.list-freebsd-2004@morbius.sent.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: grub doesn't know ufs filesystem X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 21:42:34 -0000 RW wrote: > On Wednesday 14 December 2005 16:36, Micah wrote: > >>Some of the grubs that ship with Linux distros >>do not support ufs. > > > I'm curious as to why people care about this so much. There are numerous > threads about whether or not particular bootloaders support UFS. > > A bootloader needs to understand Linux filesystems to boot Linux off a logical > partition, but BSDs slices are always on primary partitions. Is there really > any advantage to going directly to /boot/loader, rather than simply chaining? I used chainloading for a while until I wanted multiple installs of FreeBSD on the same drive. Using chainloading from grub always booted the first FreeBSD regardless of which slice was specified in menu.lst. Changing it to use /boot/loader allowed me to actually have more than one FreeBSD on the same drive. Also, grub places some files on a host filesystem. It may be more convenient to have those files stored on UFS rather than FAT or EXT. Or you may have a system that consists only of multiple FreeBSD installs. In that case, if you use grub (rather than FreeBSD's manager), you'd have to make a partition solely for grub. HTH, Micah