Is it possible to fix slice order with gpart/any other tool ?

[Manish Jain]

On Monday 17 April 2017 11:58 PM, Shamim Shahriar wrote:
> Hello
>
> Just out of curiosity, did you try changing the vfs.root.mount option 
> in the loader.conf? Also, I'm not sure what you mean by having to 
> press F2 -- it can mean do many different things at various stages of 
> booting, if refrain from using a guess.
>
> Hope this helps
>

Hi Shamim,

Thanks for responding. Your tip would probably have been more useful had 
the FreeBSD installation been rendered unbootable - which is not the 
case here. It is just that I was having to press F2 instead of F3 to 
boot FreeBSD.

BTW, F<n> is the function key methodology that the Boot Easy manager 
installed via boot0cfg uses to boot operating systems on an MBR disk. If 
I were to list the things in FreeBSD which make it better than anything 
else on this planet, my list would begin with : No-Blink Cursor; 
Beastie; the inbuilt ports+pkg combination; and - last but surely not 
the least - Boot Easy.

Returning to my problem, I ran into some seriously good luck. A google 
search got me to locate there there are commercial tools on the internet 
which can alter slice indexes in the MBR table. But there is no way I am 
ever to going to pay for commercial software. Software must either be 
open-source or free - even pirated software seems a better option to me 
than commercial goodies  : -)

But since there are tools available that claim to do be able to do this, 
I opined that it would be worth a shot to see the effects of recreating 
the slice from within Windows. (I was anyway ready the delete all slices 
and install FreeBSD afresh with the right MBR indexes for slices).

So I booted Windows again, and used CompMgmt.msc to create a slice in 
the 'hole' at ada0s2. (As per the correct/normal geometry : ada0s3 is 
FreeBSD and ada0s4 is already occupied with an EBR slice).

To my pleasant surprise, MS did a darned good thing : it created the 
slice; and simultaneously  shuffled the slice order yet again to 
normalize them with 2 after 1; 3 after 2; and 4 after 3.

So it ends pleasantly for me. When I rebooted the system, Boot Easy 
prompted me with F3 for FreeBSD. And the installation boots normally 
when I press F3 - as if nothing ever happened.

But I do wish folks reading this message to draw a lesson : never use 
Windows for management of non-native slices. As far as possible, use 
gpart Or Linux fdisk.

Regards
Manish Jain