From owner-freebsd-hackers  Wed Jan 31 12:56:25 1996
Return-Path: owner-hackers
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id MAA09895
          for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 12:56:25 -0800 (PST)
Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id MAA09870
          for <hackers@FreeBSD.org>; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 12:56:19 -0800 (PST)
Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id NAA10520; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 13:53:48 -0700
From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Message-Id: <199601312053.NAA10520@phaeton.artisoft.com>
Subject: Re: Converting from Linux to FreeBSD
To: lehey.pad@sni.de (Greg Lehey)
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 13:53:48 -0700 (MST)
Cc: pierce@diamondmm.com, hackers@FreeBSD.org
In-Reply-To: <199601311519.QAA02179@nixpbe.pdb.sni.de> from "Greg Lehey" at Jan 31, 96 04:15:24 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> > My questions...
> >
> >         can linux be 'upgraded' in place to freeBSD?
> 
> Probably not.  Certainly, in view of the requirement that you don't go
> down for long, you'd be better off installing FreeBSD on separate
> disks.  That way, if you *do* experience problems, you can fall back
> to Linux quickly and painlessly.

In particular, the Linux second stage boot code will not work for
FreeBSD, which expects the second stage boot code to pass it much
information from BIOS space that is unavailable in protected mode.

In addition, using the FreeBSD second stage boot will not by default
recognize the unsliced partitions Linux uses as mountable as root,
nor will the kernel recognize ext2fs by default (variant root FS
types is one argument pro a bootfs).

At a minimum, your root FS will need to be UFS at present, unless you
plan to use unredistributable local hacks to put the GPL'ed code
statically in a BSD kernel.

> >         does freeBSD support the ext2 file system from linux w/o
> >                 reformatting?
> 
> No, sorry.  You'll have to convert everything to ufs.

Yes, but not for root (see above).


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.