Fixing an Assimilated MBR?

[Dan Strick]

>>
> Is there an "official" way to fix an MBR that has been overwritten such
> that there is still a valid partition table and valid MBR, but not the
> one you want?
>
>	...
>
> I was able to rig it back by going into the custom installation option
> and just setting a drive as active and choosing to reload the MBR.
> However, it isn't readily apparent that this is what is happening as
> sysinstall will then complain about different things before rewriting
> the MBR/partition table. However, it does work...
>
>	...
>>

Check out the "boot0cfg" command.

You can also use the "fdisk" command, but I don't know which master
bootstrap program it likes to install.

You probably won't need to reinstall the next level bootstrap program.
The program that would install it for you is called "disklabel" or
"bsdlabel".

If you can't boot the FreeBSD OS that you previously installed, you should
be able to boot your installation media and run these commands in "fixit"
mode (or whatever it is called these days).  You will need either the fixit
floppy or the live file system CD (...disc2.iso).

Dan Strick
strick at covad.net