Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 10:20:30 -0500 (EST) From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: MLandman@face2interface.com (Marty Landman) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: how to set up a dual boot system Message-ID: <200502141520.j1EFKVD13483@clunix.cl.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <6.2.0.14.0.20050213205129.01dfab48@mail.face2interface.com> from "Marty Landman" at Feb 13, 2005 08:53:40 PM
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> > I must've goofed somehow. Left windows 98 on the primary master ide and > installed fbsd 5.2 on the other two ide's; installation seemed to go well, > and I installed the bootmgr on the first of the two ide's that fbsd is on. > However when I reboot from the hard drive go right into windows. > > Where did I go wrong, and how do I fix it? The MBR has to be installed on the first disk found in the boot list which will most likely be the one with Winxxx on it - your description sounds like that and anyway MS doesn't like to be installed anywhere else. The MBR should also be on the other two disks, but definitely must be on that first one. Then you have to install a boot sector on those two disks. The MS MBR doesn't know how to boot anything but an MS system. Basically, when the system boots, it starts with the BIOS. The BIOS looks at its list of boot devices according to how it is configured and begins to check them in order. It tries to boot from the first device in its list that has an MBR. That MBR is what then may look at the other disks for a bootable slice. The MS MBR doesn't know how to recognize any other type of system or boot anything but MS stuff. So, you have to make sure that the first device that the BIOS finds with an MBR has a FreeBSD (or other intelligent) MBR that knows how to boot anything. The FreeBSD MBR will boot any of the systems with a standard boot sequence, but it is a little limited in its ability to label them. It has labels for a few, such as FreeBSD, MS-DOS, some LINUXen. But it doesn't have names for many others such as MS with an NTFS slice. It will boot any of these including the ones it doesn't have names for, but it just puts up ??? for the name in the boot menu of ones it doesn't have names for. That is not really a problem, though it can be confusing on a machine if you have one FreeBSD slice and three bootable slices with system that say ??? for the name. You have to remember which ??? is which... For that reasonable reason plus other prejudices many people install a third part MBR/loader such as Grub. But, it isn't essential to get things to work. The second thing you did wrong is installing F-5.2. If you want 5.xxx then install 5.3 (or at least 5.2.1). FreeBSD 5.2 was almost immediately supplanted because of problems - probably not related to your current situation, but you don't want it anyway. ////jerry > > Marty > > > Marty Landman, Face 2 Interface Inc. 845-679-9387 > Search & Sort Easily: http://face2interface.com/Products/FormATable.shtml > Web Installed Formmail: http://face2interface.com/formINSTal > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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