Multi-boot

[doug]

On Tue, 4 Sep 2018, FreeBSD TWC wrote:

> I have previous FreeBSD experience, but have been inactive for a few years.
>
> I used to partition disks with an MBR, and install multiple OSes and 
> FreeBSD had a boot manager (now known as boot0) that allowed me to 
> select which OS to boot.
>
> I now have a new machine that uses UEFI and I can't figure out how to 
> mimic the multi-boot menu.
>
> It appears to me that I can no longer use boot0 because I'm using amd64, 
> not i386.
>
> I want to use EFI, GPT, and select OSes from a menu.  The efibootmgr man 
> page appears to be incorrect.  I tried the example and it caused a 
> syntax error.  There is no -d option (the command said -d ada0)
>
> I was hoping to add another EFI variable and hoped it would allow me to 
> select which partition to boot. I'm using FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE.

With UEFI it is a brave new world. Start here:

   http://ximalas.info/2015/03/19/uefi-gpt-windows-10-freebsd-10-and-refind/
   https://www.robertcina.com
   http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html
   https://wiki.freebsd.org/UEFI

A number of people have posted to questions so searching your history/archives 
for UEFI will at least give useful background as to the current state of 
booting. I assume the second operating system is windows. If it is, and it is 
still there, take some care not to kill it. My general experience is that if 
FreeBSD does not work with your BIOS/firmware you pretty much have to figure out 
what file is required and where that file should be to boot. The refind install 
is good in that your system probably knows how to boot that and refind knows how 
to boot FreeBSD and others. I used the first link to install FreeBSD 10.3 (AFAIK 
its all the same after 10) with windows 10 on a Lenovo laptop. My only problems 
were not understanding how to do some of the steps with the windows commands.

Doug