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Date:      Thu, 15 Jun 1995 15:08:10 +0100 (BST)
From:      Paul Richards <paul@lambda.demon.co.uk>
To:        rwatson@clark.net (Robert Watson)
Cc:        bde@zeta.org.au, jkh@freebsd.org, bugs@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: originally a newsgroup post, but news server here isn't working
Message-ID:  <199506151408.PAA00290@lambda.demon.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950615074145.17480B-100000@clark.net> from "Robert Watson" at Jun 15, 95 07:46:53 am

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In reply to Robert Watson who said
> 
> 
> 
> a) no boot manager installed -- for soe reason that didn't happen during 
> sysinstall.
> 
> b) a bootable freebsd partition, wd(a,1) if anything knew to look there.
> 
> c) a FreeBSD boot loader on floppy that can be told to point to wd(a,1)
> 
> So here's my question ;).  Is there any post-installation way to get 
> FreeBSD to put in the boot manager, or is that only available from the 
> installation program, which has a nasty tendancy towards overwriting ones 
> root partition entries if run with any decisions made (eg., to install 
> the boot manager, you have to install root.flp, as far as I can see, and 
> that zaps my /etc tree (also on wd(a,1)).

Yes, if you play around a bit.

1) Run sysinstall :-)

2) Go to the mbr (fdisk) partition editor, DON'T change any partition
   sizes. Just mark your primary FreeBSD partition as bootable.

3) Go to the disklabel editor, don't change anything other than
   re-assigning the mount points.  That should mean that all the
   partitions are marked read-only.

4) Proceed with the installation, it will ask about installing a boot
   manager -- choose one.

5) It will then fsck your disks, you should be able to abort the
   installation at this point (hit ctrl-C) before it does anything
   else and all that will have happened is that the partition will
   have been marked bootable and a boot manager will have been
   installed.

This isn't a guarantee but I had similar problems and something along these
lines worked for me.

-- 
  Paul Richards, Bluebird Computer Systems. FreeBSD core team member. 
  Internet: paul@FreeBSD.org, http://www.freebsd.org/~paul
  Phone: 0370 462071 (Mobile), +44 1222 457651 (home)



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