Booting 2nd(!) FreeBSD installation sitting on same disk

Andre Albsmeier Andre.Albsmeier at siemens.com
Sat Nov 3 16:54:32 UTC 2012


For various reasons I have to use this disk layout:

One harddisk with MBR and 3 slices on a i386 box:

Slice 1: Windows XP :-(
Slice 2: FreeBSD 7.4-STABLE V1
Slice 3: FreeBSD 7.4-STABLE V2

The MBR is configured as:

options=packet,noupdate,nosetdrv
default_selection=F2 (Slice 2)

When booting, I can choose between:

F1 Win
F2 FreeBSD
F3 FreeBSD

However, when pressing F3, the system of slice 2(!) is      
loaded. This is due to the fact that boot1 always loads
the first active FreeBSD slice ;-(.

I have two possibilities to actually boot slice 3:

1. Playing with currdev when loader(8) is loaded (or
   using loader.conf of slice 2).

2. Using boot0cfg to allow updating the MBR.
 
1. is not really fexible and 2. means that the system
remembers which slice was booted last (something I do
not want).
 
Is there no chance to actually honour the fact that F3 was
pressed and boot from slice 3 without updating the MBR before?
 
Thanks,
 
        -Andre



More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list