Freebsd, Suse Linux dual booting

[Jeff Rollin]

On 17/09/06, Dan Bikle <dan.bikle at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> FreeBSD and Linux people,
>
> I have a PC which I want to boot as windows, FreeBSD, and Suse 10.1 Linux.
>
> Currently, FreeBSD boot0 menu shows both Windows and FreeBSD as boot-able.
>
> The FreeBSD boot0 menu does not show the Linux OS (which I just
> installed).
>
> So, I did some reading of the FreeBSD handbook:
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/boot-blocks.html
>
> It suggests that I have 2 ways to solve this problem:
>
> 1. Configure the FreeBSD boot0 menu so that it can boot
> Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux
>
> Or,
>
> 2. Replace The FreeBSD boot0 menu with  LILO Boot Manager
>
> I like option 1.
>
> Q1: How do I add Suse 10.1 Linux to the FreeBSD boot0 menu?
>
> As for option 2,
> if I want to try LILO, I'll need to toss my FreeBSD boot0 menu in the
> trash.
>
> Q2: If I cannot get LILO to boot FreeBSD, how do I boot get
> FreeBSD to boot and then how do I restore my old FreeBSD boot0 menu?


AFAIK, FreeBSD's boot loader cannot be configured, but merely loads the OSes
detected when it is run. If it does not detect something, you're out of
luck.

A better option than LILO is GRUB, which is installed by default by SUSE
10.x. XP will probably be detected by the installlation program, but if not,
here's how to add both XP and FreeBSD to the menu:

Edit the file /boot/grub/menu.1st. Create new entries as follows.

# The following entries assume that Windows XP is on drive 0, partition 0
(/dev/hda1 in Linux, /dev/ad0s1 in FBSD), with SuSE Linux on drive 0,
partition 1 (/dev/hda2 or /dev/ad0s2), and FreeBSD on drive 1, partition 0
(/dev/hdb1, /dev/ad1s0a)

title=WindowsXP
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

title=SuSE Linux 10.1
root (hd0,1)
kernel={the correct parameters should already be here}

title=FreeBSD 6.1
root (hd1,0,a)
chainloader +1

# menu.1st ends here

HTH,

Jeff.