Restoring FreeBSD grub loader

[backyard]

--- "Ivan \"Rambius\" Ivanov"
<rambiusparkisanius at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> Thank you for your response.
> 
> On 10/1/06, backyard <backyard1454-bsd at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > --- "Ivan \"Rambius\" Ivanov"
> > <rambiusparkisanius at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > I installed FreeBSD 6.1 on one machine with grub
> > > boot loader. In the
> > > beginning there was only one entry in grub -
> namely
> > > FreeBSD. Later, I
> > > had to install Windows XP on the machine and of
> > > course, it destroyed
> > > grub and now I cannot boot FreeBSD.
> > >
> > > I tried with booting from the FreeBSD
> installation
> > > disk choosing Fixit
> > > option, but I could not use successfully
> > > grub-install command.
> > >
> > > My question is: how can I restore the FreeBSD
> grub
> > > loader? Could you
> > > please give me any hints or advance. Thank you
> very
> > > much in advance.
> > >
> > > Regards
> > > Ivan
> > >
> > > --
> >
> > I would suggest you make a grub booting floppy
> disk
> > then you can escape to command mode once the disk
> > loades and install grub with
> >
> > root (hd0,0,a)   # or wherever it is
> > setup (hd0       # again wherever it is
> >
> > assuming you have already placed the grub
> bootfiles on
> > your hard drive and configured menu.lst you should
> be
> > all set. I have only encountered one computer this
> > method failed.
> In fact, I am using a laptop that does not have a
> floppy drive, so I
> could not use booting floppy disks.
> 

I use a USB floppy drive to boot my laptop and install
grub. Although I haven't been able to use fdformat
with the floppy drive so I use one of my desktops to
prapare the disks.

> >
> > you could alternatively flip the kernel tunable
> that
> > allows raw writes to the boot sectors of the
> disks. I
> > don't recall what it is but I think the grub docs
> talk
> > about it in the man or info pages.
> >
> > I'm supprised XP messed it up, 2000 seemed to
> respect
> > existing bootloaders...
> I fixed the problem in the following way: I have
> another FreeBSD
> laptop, so I copied its boot sector using the
> command
> 
> # dd if=/dev/ad0s1a of=/mnt/bootsect.bsd bs=512
> count=1
> 

I've used that method myself when grub hadn't been
updated to support UFS2. I had completely forgotten
about it though.

> Then I used bootsect.bsd to to boot in FreeBSD via
> the NT loader (I
> found this link useful:
> http://www.unixguide.net/freebsd/faq/09.10.shtml).
> After I boot to
> FreeBSD I installed the grub loader.

to each their own; the beauty of Unix... glad you got
it working.

> 
> Regards
> Ivan
> 
> -- 
> 

-brian