From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 17 19:22:19 2003 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 8FC2F16A4CE for ; Mon, 17 Nov 2003 19:22:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp.covadmail.net (mx05.covadmail.net [63.65.120.65]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 559BA43F85 for ; Mon, 17 Nov 2003 19:22:18 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dan@covad.net) Received: (covad.net 15695 invoked from network); 18 Nov 2003 03:22:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mist.nodomain) (67.101.150.232) by sun-qmail15 with SMTP; 18 Nov 2003 03:22:12 -0000 Received: from mist.nodomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mist.nodomain (8.12.9p2/8.12.9) with ESMTP id hAI3MBQX000346; Mon, 17 Nov 2003 19:22:12 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dan@mist.nodomain) Received: (from dan@localhost) by mist.nodomain (8.12.9p2/8.12.9/Submit) id hAI3MBNt000345; Mon, 17 Nov 2003 19:22:11 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dan) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 19:22:11 -0800 (PST) From: Dan Strick Message-Id: <200311180322.hAI3MBNt000345@mist.nodomain> To: stanb@panix.com cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org cc: dan@mist.nodomain Subject: Re: STABLE & CURRENT on same machine? 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: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 03:22:19 -0000 >>> > I suddenly find myself with a need to use something thta seems to only be > supported in 5.1 CURRENT. I've never visited 5.x land before, and I'm a bit > warry. > > I've got a Compaq N410C that's pretty happy in 4 STABLE land, and has a > Linux partition. I'm considering blowing away the Linux partition, and > replaceing it with 5.1 CURRENT. > > Any issues (loader etc all) I should know about here? >>> If you use the standard FreeBSD MBR bootstrap program, boot0, and you configure it with the "noupdate" option (an uncommon configuration) and you have two bootable FreeBSD slices on that disk, then you can boot only one of them without editing the MBR slice table. (Whichever one is the "active" slice or the first one if neither is active.) This is due to a limitation in the bootstrap design. (There is apparently no convention by which the boot0 program can pass the booted slice number to the boot1 program.) Dan Strick strick@covad.net