Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 09:33:04 -0700 From: BFD <bfd@pcisys.net> To: doc@FreeBSD.org Subject: Regarding the FreeBSD Handbook -- Suggestion for 3rd edition Message-ID: <3C3F13C0.6010608@pcisys.net>
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Hello,
I am very much impressed by the 2nd edition of the FreeBSD Handbook: it
is at least one magnitude of order better than the first edition, and I
think it was well worth the hard-earned money I squandered on it.
There is however, one suggestion I would like to make regarding Section
7.3.1 MBR, /boot/boot0 (below):
boot0 is very simple, since the program in the MBR can only be 512
bytes in size. If you have installed the FreeBSD MBR and have
installed multiple operating systems on your hard disks then you
will see a display similar to this one at boot time.
Example 7-1. boot0 Screenshot
F1 DOS
F2 FreeBSD
F3 Linux
F4 ??
F5 Drive 1
Default: F2
Other operating systems, in particular Windows 95, have been known
to overwrite an existing MBR with their own. If this happens to you,
or you want to replace your existing MBR with the FreeBSD MBR then
use the following command.
# fdisk -B -b /boot/boot0 device
Where device is the device that you boot from, such as ad0 for the
first IDE disk, ad2 for the first IDE disk on a second IDE
controller, da0 for the first SCSI disk, and so on.
I believe that this section would be more useful if it went into more
detail on how to handle a dual-boot system. While Example 7-1 shows that
multiple boot selections can be made, there is no real explanation on
how to do this.
It strikes me that if examples were added to show how to get additional
OS's into the boot loader that the section would be of greater use. One
could postulate two examples:
1. The user adds a second OS, say Linux, to their hard drive, and
wants to use the FreeBSD loader instead of LILO.
2. The user adds a second hard drive with another OS on it, and
wants to user the FreeBSD loader on the first hard drive to choose
between the two.
Giving an explanation and the configuration that led to the listing in
Example 7-1 would also be useful.
This explanation could be incorporated into the on-line edition until
the hard-copy came out.
BFD
P.S. I have a vested interest in this. I recently added a second hard
drive to my system that has Linux on it and have been trying to figure
out how to get FreeBSD on the first drive to add it to the loader so
that I can dual-boot. So even if you chose to ignore my suggestion for
the book, could you help with how to do this?
< Pathetic whining noises follow > <g>.
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