FreeBSD, Ubuntu and Win XP on one system

[Michel Talon]

Jason W Morgan wrote:

> Also, be sure to keep a backup of your modified GRUB config---it seems
> that each time Ubuntu decides it needs to perform a significant update,
> it replaces the GRUB config with the default, making FreeBSD once again
> inaccessible. There is probably a way to prevent this, but I never got
> around to investigating it.

Yes, in general, in Debian or Ubuntu config files there are markers
which delimitate what the system is allowed to mess with and the rest.
For example, for grub, i have (but the same idea appears in xorg config
file, etc. - in general it is a very good idea, which could be profitably
used by FreeBSD):

# Put static boot stanzas before and/or after AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST


title           Ubuntu
root            (hd0,5)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic root=UUID=3eda2f02-17f1-4993-b52e- dfe21bb480d5 ro locale=fr_FR vga=791
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-16-generic
savedefault
boot

title           FreeBSD
root            (hd0,3)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1

title           Windows XP Media Center Edition
root            (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items above from the
# Debian
# ones.



### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
## lines between the AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST markers will be modified
## by the debian update-grub script except for the default options below

## DO NOT UNCOMMENT THEM, Just edit them to your needs

Here things will be upgraded automatically

.....

title           Ubuntu, memtest86+
root            (hd0,5)
kernel          /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST


Here things are safe.




Note that, as remarked by several people, contrary to the grub version
in ports, the grub version coming with Ubuntu doesn't read the UFS2
filesystem, so one needs to load FreeBSD by chain booting instead of
directly loading /boot/loader.



-- 

Michel TALON