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Date:      Mon, 16 Dec 2002 21:48:17 -0500
From:      Jud <judmarc@fastmail.fm>
To:        Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu>
Cc:        mikemcg@ucla.edu, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Dual booting FreeBSD 4.7 and Windows XP
Message-ID:  <20021216214817.34c3e30e.judmarc@fastmail.fm>
In-Reply-To: <200212170052.gBH0q3F18007@clunix.cl.msu.edu>
References:  <016e01c2a553$7a2021f0$1a00a8c0@HOME> <200212170052.gBH0q3F18007@clunix.cl.msu.edu>

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On Mon, 16 Dec 2002 19:52:02 -0500 (EST)
Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu> wrote:

[snip]
> If it finds a bootable slice that it
> doesn't recognize, it just calls it '???' (but still knows how to 
> load its boot sector and pass off control.  For slices on disks that
> don't look bootable, it just ignores these and doesn't even list them
> in the menu.

Strictly speaking, the ??? isn't because the bootloader doesn't
"recognize" the slice, but that the filesystem it does recognize on that
slice has more than one name and might belong to one of several
operating systems.  In the case of NT/W2K/XP, the filesystem is called
NTFS by MS, HPFS by OS/2, and I believe QNX may use it as well.  Some
sort of user-configurable name might be built in to the FreeBSD
bootloader, but AIUI that would be difficult to do within its extremely
small size.  Grub and other bootloaders do this by means of user config
files and other pieces that live outside the bootloader itself, and so
don't have the size limitation.

Jud

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