Trying to understand the boot process

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <4C030271.3090807 at userid.org>
            Pierre Lamy <pierre at userid.org> writes:
: I've got a nice little Atom box with a CF and hard drive, and I can
: currently boot NanoBSD off the flash no problem.
: 
: I would like to optionally select the HD as a bootable device, and it
: does show up in the boot:
: 
: 1  FreeBSD
: 3  FreeBSD
: 5  Drive 1
: 
: Now, I have already set a slice and put /boot in ad4s1a, and FreeBSD
: is manually installed out of a chroot'ed install (tar'd on seperate
: system and extracted correctly to the appropriate local HD filesystem)
: but I can't figure out how to actually get it booted, it seems to be
: missing the MBR?
: 
: I have already RTFM, and used bsdlabel -B ad4s1, and also tried fdisk
: -B. I simply get the "Reboot and select proper boot device or insert
: boot media..." message.
:
: Does anyone have any suggestions?

Try turning on packet mode.
 
: My second question is how to label the boot options so that 1 says
: NanoBSD, 3 doesn't show up at all, and 5 days FreeBSD.

You'd have to hack boot0 to do that, and it is very short of space.
Good luck...

Warner