From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Apr 8 16:40:55 2004 Return-Path: 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 252BF16A4CE for ; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 16:40:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sccrmhc12.comcast.net (sccrmhc12.comcast.net [204.127.202.56]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BCFFC43D1F for ; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 16:40:54 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from underway@comcast.net) Received: from localhost.localdomain (c-24-17-47-224.client.comcast.net[24.17.47.224]) by comcast.net (sccrmhc12) with ESMTP id <20040408234053012001ukvbe>; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 23:40:53 +0000 Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) i38Nf2LI030327; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 16:41:07 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from underway@comcast.net) Received: (from jojo@localhost) by localhost.localdomain (8.12.11/8.12.11/Submit) id i38Nev2P030326; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 16:40:57 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from underway@comcast.net) To: Johnson David References: <20040407212156.31712.qmail@web25001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <200404071513.37640.DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> From: underway@comcast.net (Gary W. Swearingen) Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2004 16:40:56 -0700 In-Reply-To: <200404071513.37640.DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> (Johnson David's message of "Wed, 7 Apr 2004 15:13:37 -0700") Message-ID: <1mad1mox6f.d1m@mail.comcast.net> User-Agent: Gnus/5.1002 (Gnus v5.10.2) XEmacs/21.4 (Reasonable Discussion, berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii cc: Tadimeti Keshav cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: unable to use BOOT EASY to boot linux X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2004 23:40:55 -0000 Johnson David writes: > On Wednesday 07 April 2004 02:21 pm, Tadimeti Keshav wrote: >> hi all. >> I added a 2 GB linux disk as a slave and installed >> Mandrake Linux with LILO on the root partition of >> linux. > > So far this is correct. LILO needs to be on the *root* partition. No, it doesn't. It only needs to be on some boot record: the MBR or the BR of one of the 4 primary partitions. It was once common to put it on a small /boot partition in the first 1024 cylinders (no longer necessary), with the Linux root partition above 1024. > The standard boot loader is NOT a boot loader. All it will do is boot > the partition that is marked bootable. You want to choose BootMgr for > each harddrive, if you want to use the FreeBSD boot manager. Please see > the section in the Handbook" 2.5.3 Install a Boot Manager". The IBM/MSFT(?)-standard boot loader *is* a boot loader; just slightly less sophisticated than "Boot Easy", and not interactive. Both load more further bootstrap code to boot one or more OSes (or some program for that matter). I guess it's debatable, depending on definitions, whether the standard boot loader is a boot manager. > It's amazing that they were able to fit a general purpose boot manager > into only 512 bytes! Chapter 7 of the Handbook "The FreeBSD Booting > Process" describes this in excruciating detail. It fits in 447 (=512-1-16*4) bytes, IIRC. Beware that the Handbook's "stage one" is (at least) the third stage in the bootstrap process, counting the BIOS boot code and the MBR boot code.