RFC: second try at improving Handbook's boot manager text

[Kevin Oberman]

Gary,

I am not proofing the formatting. I don't know the tags and standards of
FreeBSD's doc well enough to get into that. Technically, it looks good
to the best of my knowledge, but I'd expect any issues with that to be
pointed out by jhb. One clear error in wording and two uses of
semicolons that I don't see as appropriate. I think one is clearly
wrong. The other is fuzzy. Other than those, it looks good to me. (I
took the red-eye back from the East Coast last night and am a bit sleep
deprived, so I could have missed things.)

I do think tha this is a very nice discussion of things that are not
well understood by many folks who use PCs and FreeBSD and a real
improvement over the original text. Thanks for doing it.

Comments in-line:
> From: garys at opusnet.com (Gary W. Swearingen)
> Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 14:44:30 -0700
> 
> A couple of people didn't agree with my grammar and one had some other
> comments about the boot manager text of the Handbook (and my change).
> So here's another go at it, before I've committed it this time.
> There's considerably more to criticize now.  :)
> 
> I wasn't given much help with the "boot0ext" thing, so I'll leave that
> for others to add later.
> 
> --- chapter.committed1.sgml	Mon Sep 12 08:14:54 2005
> +++ chapter.sgml	Wed Sep 14 14:24:39 2005
> @@ -71,32 +71,44 @@
>        load the operating system, which has become shortened to
>        <quote>booting</quote>.</para>
>  
> +    <indexterm><primary>BIOS</primary></indexterm>
> +
> +    <indexterm><primary>Basic Input/Output System</primary><see>BIOS</see></indexterm>
> +
>      <para>On x86 hardware the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) is responsible
>        for loading the operating system.  To do this, the BIOS looks on the
>        hard disk for the Master Boot Record (MBR), which must be located on a
>        specific place on the disk.  The BIOS has enough knowledge to load and
>        run the MBR, and assumes that the MBR can then carry out the rest of the
> -      tasks involved in loading the operating system.</para>
> +      tasks involved in loading the operating system,
> +      possibly with the help the BIOS.</para>
             of----------------^
> +
> +    <indexterm><primary>Boot Manager</primary></indexterm>
> +
> +    <indexterm><primary>Boot Loader</primary></indexterm>
>  
> -    <indexterm>
> -      <primary>BIOS</primary>
> -    </indexterm>
> -
> -    <indexterm>
> -      <primary>Basic Input/Output System</primary>
> -      <see>BIOS</see>
> -    </indexterm>
> -
> -    <para>If you only have one operating system installed on your disks then
> -      the standard MBR will suffice.  This MBR searches for the first bootable
> -      slice on the disk, and then runs the code on that slice to load the
> -      remainder of the operating system.</para>
> +    <para>The code within the MBR is usually referred to as a <emphasis>boot
> +      manager</emphasis>, especially when it interacts with the user; in this case
                                                  . I------------------^
> +      the boot manager usually also has more code in the first
> +      <emphasis>track</emphasis> of the disk or within some OS's file system.  (A
> +      boot manager is sometimes also called a <emphasis>boot loader</emphasis>,
> +      but FreeBSD uses that term for a later stage of booting.) Popular boot
> +      managers include <application>boot0</application> (a.k.a. <application>Boot
> +      Easy</application>, the standard &os; boot manager),
> +      <application>Grub</application>, <application>GAG</application>, and
> +      <application>LILO</application>.
> +      (Only <application>boot0</application> fits within the MBR.)</para>
> +
> +    <para>If you have only one operating system installed on your disks then
> +      a standard PC MBR will suffice.  This MBR searches for the first bootable
> +      (a.k.a. active) slice on the disk, and then runs the code on that slice to load the
> +      remainder of the operating system.  The MBR installed by &man.fdisk.8;,
> +      by default, is such an MBR; it is based on <filename>/boot/mbr</filename>.</para>
             . I-------------------^ (This one is debatable and there
is no clear right/wrong issue.)
>  
>      <para>If you have installed multiple operating systems on your disks then

[...]
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634