How I setup a dual-boot PC?

Dan Bikle dan.bikle at gmail.com
Sat Jul 22 20:36:01 UTC 2006


FreeBSD people,

I'm trying to figure out how to setup dual boot on my PC.

The PC has a 250G drive.

Currently, when I boot, I see this menu on the console:

F1  DOS
F2  DOS
F3  FreeBSD
F4  FreeBSD

F1 I avoid; The factory put an XP thingee there.
F2 works well, when I pick it, the box boots with XP.
F3 works well, when I pick it, the box boots with FreeBSD 5.5

F4 does not work; I want it to boot FreeBSD 6.1

So I did the obvious thing.

I got a 6.1 installation CD and walked through the install.

During the install, I asked that /dev/ad8s4d be mounted as /.

But when I am given the F1,2,3,4 boot menu,
and when I pick F4,
I see this error:

F4 Invalid partition
No /boot/loader
FreeBSD / i386 boot
Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel

boot:

Can any of you give me any tips on how to make /dev/ad8s4d
bootable?

Or can you give me an understanding about how I can tell the
' boot: ' prompt that I want to boot off of /dev/ad8s4d


BTW......

After I boot 5.5,  I'm able to mount the partition
I want to boot from.

So, I mounted it as /root61

I see this:

df -k
Filesystem  1K-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ad8s3a  91913630 20140014 64420526    24%    /
/dev/ad8s4d  94132520  1077196 85524724     1%    /root61
devfs               1        1        0   100%    /dev
linprocfs           4        4        0   100%    /usr/compat/linux/proc

When I look in /root61,
I see this:

moibsd# ls -la /root61/boot/kernel/kernel
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  6687708 May  6 21:42 /root61/boot/kernel/kernel
moibsd# ls -la /root61
total 56
drwxr-xr-x  20 root  wheel      512 Jul 21 18:32 .
drwxr-xr-x  28 root  wheel     1024 Jul 22 13:55 ..
-rw-r--r--   2 root  wheel      801 May  6 21:00 .cshrc
-rw-r--r--   2 root  wheel      251 May  6 21:00 .profile
drwxrwxr-x   2 root  operator   512 Jul 21 18:29 .snap
-r--r--r--   1 root  wheel     6187 May  6 21:00 COPYRIGHT
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     1024 Jul 21 18:29 bin
drwxr-xr-x   5 root  wheel      512 Jul 21 18:32 boot
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel      512 Jul 21 18:29 cdrom
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel      512 Jul 21 18:29 cdrom1
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel       10 Jul 21 18:32 compat -> usr/compat
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel      512 Jul 21 18:29 dev
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel      512 Jul 21 18:29 dist
drwxr-xr-x  18 root  wheel     2048 Jul 21 18:35 etc
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel     1024 Jul 21 18:29 lib
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel      512 Jul 21 18:29 libexec
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel      512 May  6 20:54 mnt
dr-xr-xr-x   2 root  wheel      512 May  6 20:54 proc
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     2560 Jul 21 18:29 rescue
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel      512 Jul 21 18:29 root
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     2560 Jul 21 18:29 sbin
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root  wheel       11 Jul 21 18:29 sys -> usr/src/sys
drwxrwxrwt   2 root  wheel      512 May  6 20:54 tmp
drwxr-xr-x  16 root  wheel      512 Jul 21 18:32 usr
drwxr-xr-x  22 root  wheel      512 Jul 21 18:32 var
moibsd#


Thanks,
-Dan


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