Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 23:22:22 +0200 (SAT) From: Robert Nordier <rnordier@nordier.com> To: cjclark@home.com Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Multiple FreeBSDs on One Disk Message-ID: <199902282122.XAA05442@ceia.nordier.com> In-Reply-To: <199902282040.PAA13491@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> from "Crist J. Clark" at "Feb 28, 99 03:40:09 pm"
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Crist J. Clark wrote:
> IIRC, BootEasy has trouble with multiple FreeBSD slices. That is,
> it only sees the first FreeBSD slice, and since there is no way to
> specifcy a slice at the 'boot:' prompt, you are kinda stuck.
BootEasy is not the problem; the old (pre-3.1R) boot blocks are.
The new boot blocks actually do allow you to specify a slice in
response to the "boot:" prompt, for example
wd(0,2,a)/kernel
though this is not very explicitly documented anywhere. However,
for 3.1R (and -stable and -current) systems, the new /boot/loader
is the recommended way to boot the system (and you can specify
slices, though using a different syntax, at the loader prompt as
well).
> I would like to clobber my Win98 slice with 3.1 to give it a try. My
> other partition is FreeBSD 2.2.7. This presents two problems, the one
> mentioned above, and second, 3.1 can't be booted by the old
> bootstrapper due to the a.out to ELF move.
>
> Can the new 3.1 boot handle this? i.e. Will it allow me to choose or
> specify which FreeBSD partition to choose from and if it does, can it
> actually boot both?
With the new boot code, this works fine. The boot manager (BootEasy,
or the new boot0 workalike) will set the selected FreeBSD slice active;
the new boot blocks will use the active slice in preference to the
first FreeBSD slice; and /boot/loader will be loaded, and will itself
load the kernel. So you can just press F1 .. F4 to boot up to four
versions of FreeBSD from the same disk. (You can use the new boot code
to boot 2.x systems.)
> If it can't, what are some work arounds? Could I have one boot from HD
> and one from floppy (this would work if one bootstrapper could see
> both slices and some how allow me to pick one of them)? I only have a
> single IDE HD, and no other read-write, bootable devices.
>
> I could not find this in the FAQ, Handbook, or 3.1 release notes. Mail
> archive searches return a message that the archives are not available
> at the moment... what's that about? I follow -questions fairly closely
> and have seen this mentioned but cannot for the life of me remember
> the solution (or verification there is none).
With the recent developments to the new boot code, most discussion has
been on -current (and lately on -stable).
--
Robert Nordier
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