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Mutt Joined: 30 Nov 2003 Posts: 125

Hey guys, I got a question about FreeBSD. I am in the process of installing it at the moment (about 50%) and I just wanted to ask something. I do not think I'll be able to boot it with GRUB, my boot loader for red hat and win98, and it hasn't asked me if i want to make a boot disk, so, I was wondering, can I boot it with the CD I have (downloaded ISO image and burned it), without installing it again or somethin? By the way, I downloaded both CD's, if that matters, from the freebsd ftp servers. Thx a bunch guys, srry that I'm sorta new to the world of Unix!

Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2003 6:26 pm Post subject:

when you create your disklabels it should ask you about a boot manager. once it's installed and configured w/ ports you can install grub if you choose.. but their bootmanager should handle 98 and bsd just fine..

perhaps you should spend a little time and read the handbook..

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/

Mutt Joined: 30 Nov 2003 Posts: 125

Ok, I have 2 hard drives. One has two partitions with 40GB each. On one partition is Red Hat Linux, and on the other Windows 98. On my second hard drive, FreeBSD is installed (without any boot loader). Currently I am using GRUB to multiboot windows and red hat. There is a file on the red hat partition called "grub.conf" which contains information with which to boot. I need to add an entry to it in order to boot FreeBSD, on my other hard drive. Heres an example, the thing that is used to boot win98:

title Windows 98
rootnoverify(hd0, 0)
chain loader ++1

I have a copy of knoppix (live on cd) that I use to look at all of my hard drives at once, but i can't look at any of the partitions created by freebsd, because the file system isn't recognized. I need to look at the files on the hard drive to decide which vmlinuz and initrd files to use in order to boot freeBsd, but I don't know where they are, and i can't boot freeBSD to find out. Someone, please tell me what these files are called, and what folder they are put in when you install freeBSD, and also:

i have like 5 partitions on that drive that freeBSD created, which one are they located in?? is it even possible to multiboot red hat, win98, and freeBSD with grub? can i create a boot cd or floppy with which to boot freeBSD? if so, can anyone provide links?

PLEASE HELP ME GUYS, I DON'T WANT ALL OF MY WORK INSTALLING FREEBSD TO GO TO WASTE!! IF THERE ARE ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS SHORT OF REINSTALLING RED HAT, OR GETTING A NEW BOOT LOADER, PLZ, SHARE WITH ME SO THAT I MAY DECIDE THE BEST COURSE OF ACTION!! KEEP IN MIND THAT I AM NEW TO UNIX, AND HAVEN'T HAD MUCH EXPERIENCE WITH GRUB OR RED HAT! THX PEOPLE...

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2003 12:46 am Post subject:

RTFM

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2003 6:42 am Post subject:

NuTBoMbS wrote:

I have a copy of knoppix (live on cd) that I use to look at all of my hard drives at once, but i can't look at any of the partitions created by freebsd, because the file system isn't recognized.

Of course not. FreeBSD uses either UFS or UFS2 by default.. it can use ext3 but i've never tried that.. i dont think linux can read UFS

Quote:
I need to look at the files on the hard drive to decide which vmlinuz and initrd files to use in order to boot freeBsd, but I don't know where they are, and i can't boot freeBSD to find out. Someone, please tell me what these files are called, and what folder they are put in when you install freeBSD, and also:

FreeBSD DOES NOT use vmlinuz it uses it's own boot loader./.
normally something like
ufs:ad0s1a/boot/kernel/kernel (or something like that)

Quote:
i have like 5 partitions on that drive that freeBSD created, which one are they located in??

no you have 1 partition and 5 disklabels..

Quote:
is it even possible to multiboot red hat, win98, and freeBSD with grub? can i create a boot cd or floppy with which to boot freeBSD? if so, can anyone provide links?

your probbibly better off using gag

now read the handbook

Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2003 9:07 am Post subject:

oooh yah gag I had completely forgotten about that one soup. I used that for a small time before I figured out how lilo worked. It worked real well and was damn simple to setup I think.

Mutt Joined: 30 Nov 2003 Posts: 125

Well guys, I got another solution. Instead of multibooting it, I decided to get some hardware from newegg.com

It is a bay into which you put sleds with hard drives in em (you can switch hard drives easily) so when i want bsd, i'll just switch it, and the same goes for windows98 and redhat. Also, this is pretty cool, because, i'm only spending 20$ Very Happy

Thats pretty good for this type of hardware...

Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 5:10 pm Post subject:

I hope your "sleds" work