Is there a boot manager that can handle this?

[Tim Judd]

On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 5:47 PM, Doug Barton <dougb at freebsd.org> wrote:

> Howdy,
>
> I'm looking to have the following on 1 disk:
>
> Primary partitions:
> Windows XP, FreeBSD 9-current, FreeBSD 7-stable
>
> Extended partition:
> FAT32 data volume, Ubuntu Linux
>
> I have all that installed now (or did anyway) but what I can't do is
> boot all of it. Our boot manager would be fine for my taste, but doesn't
> seem to handle booting from a logical volume at all. The latest version
> of grub that came with Ubuntu works fine for that, and can handle the
> Windows and the *1st* FreeBSD partition just fine, but if I try to boot
> the 2nd FreeBSD partition grub just boots the first one again. I got
> some help from some Linux folks on some commands for grub that allowed
> me to "hide" the first FreeBSD partition, but what that seems to have
> done is change the partition type. When I tried changing it back and
> booting FreeBSD the data in the partition was gone. (No harm done, I
> have everything backed up and I hadn't started work on the FreeBSD
> partition, but still ...)
>
> So what I'm looking for is a boot manager that can do all this with
> minimal fuss, and without destroying my data. :)  Any suggestions?
>
> BTW, the current arrangement is:
> Windows, Extended, FreeBSD, FreeBSD
>
> I thought of changing that to:
> Windows, FreeBSD, Extended, FreeBSD
>
> to see if that helps grub be less confused, but I'd prefer not to do
> that work unless a) someone can tell me that it will work for sure, or
> b) no other alternatives are forthcoming.
>



FYI
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/boot-introduction.html

"...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
fdisk(8)<http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=fdisk&sektion=8>,
by default, is such an MBR. It is based on /boot/mbr."


OK, so the default /boot/mbr doesn't consider a 2nd boot disk or slice.  You
*must* (imho) remove all of the bsd bootstrapping from the equasion.  GAG
might do it (I've seen it do some wonderful stuff).but you will need a
native bsd bootstrap/loader *SOMEHOW* in order to load BSD.

You might be chasing your tail.  I wish you luck, But years ago when I read
that, I never again tried two freebsd systems on the same platter.

If necessary, add a 2nd hard disk and try boot0, GAG, or one of the other
various other bootloaders.



Good luck.