i386/61005: [boot] The Boot Manager in FreeBSD 5.2RC can't boot FreeBSD from second partition

[Dorr H. Clark]

The following reply was made to PR i386/61005; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: "Dorr H. Clark" <dclark at applmath.scu.edu>
To: freebsd-gnats-submit at FreeBSD.org, matthew at cnfug.org
Cc:  
Subject: Re: i386/61005: [boot] The Boot Manager in FreeBSD 5.2RC can't boot
 FreeBSD from second partition
Date: Sat, 09 Apr 2005 13:43:42 -0700

 Our response to 61005 is that we believe this is not a bug,
 at least not a FreeBSD bug, although there may be interoperability
 issues between some Linux distros & FreeBSD when triple booting.
 We respond with a detailed procedure explaining how to achieve
 the desired functionality of triple booting NetBSD, FreeBSD,
 and Linux on the same hard drive.
 
 In this experiment, we intend to triple boot three OSes
 as listed.  For the purposes of illustration, we will use
 the example of a 20GB hard drive, allocated with 5G for NetBSD,
 5G for FreeBSD, and the remaining 10G for linux.
 
 We perform the following steps:
 
 1) We would first achieve dual boot with NetBSD and FreeBSD by
 installing from CDROM, first NetBSD, accepting the boot manager option.
 At time of creating partitions for NetBSD create slice for FreeBSD
 and also reserve 10GB of free space to be used for Linux later on.
 
 slice 2  h  freeBSD        5G
 
 2) After NetBSD is installed, install FreeBSD in the second slice,
 accepting the boot manager option for FreeBSD.  During these menu
 interactions, designate the 10GB free space as a slice with
 filesystem ID 131 (this is for Linux).
 
 After completing this step, reboot, and while booting the system
 should offer the following options at the first stage boot loader:
 
 F1 BSD
 F2 FreeBSD
 
 3) Now we install linux in the reserved third slice.  During the Linux
 install, we accept the grub or lilo loader.  After this install
 is complete, we configure the grub or lilo loader and make it aware
 of the first two operating systems.  Once this step is complete,
 upon reboot we will see the following menu options:
 
 
 BSD
 FreeBSD
 Linux
 
 So this will allow you to triple boot the three operating systems.
 
 Nainesh Nayudu, engineer
 Dorr H. Clark, advisor
 COEN 284 - Operating Systems Case Study
 Santa Clara University,
 Santa Clara CA.