How to make the boot menu just like I want?

[Svein Halvor Halvorsen]

[Frederick, 2004-10-11]
>  This is Frederick. Is there any table to list the partition number(subtype) or sysid?
>  I have two hard disks. The first one install windows, and the second one install freebsd. 
>  I first install windows, then install freebsd. I use boot manager to manage my boot.
:
>  So please help me to find the partition number(subtype), or tell me how to do that
>  to make the change.

The FreeBSD boot manager is a very small program that lives entirely 
within the bootsector of the disk. It is therefore only one sector in 
size, or 512 bytes. To change the boot menu, you would have to reqrite 
this program. The source code is in:

/usr/src/sys/boot/i386/boot0/boot0.S

Note, however, that this program is allready exactly 512 bytes when 
compiled, so for every byte you put in, you need to take another one out. 

On my laptop I've recompiled the boot0 program to display "Diag" for the 
Dell diagnostic service partition, XP in place of DOS, and FreeBSD for my 
FreeBSD partition. To get room for the Diag selecttion, I had to remove 
Linux from the list. I think I've lost my patches, but the boot sector 
code has been living happily and undisturbed on the boot sector through 
alot of system updates.

Please be careful when replacing the boot sector. Your system may become 
unbootable, and you would have to resort to boot disks to get it back.


   Cheers,
   Svein Halvor