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From: "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@GndRsh.aac.dev.com>
Message-Id: <199707291630.JAA20288@GndRsh.aac.dev.com>
Subject: Re: Multiple FreeBSD Systems on a Single Disk
In-Reply-To: <199707290502.PAA18490@godzilla.zeta.org.au> from Bruce Evans at "Jul 29, 97 03:02:45 pm"
To: bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:30:13 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: bde@zeta.org.au, abial@korin.warman.org.pl, current@FreeBSD.ORG,
        sherwink@ix.netcom.com
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> >> The lack of support has nothing to do with the master boot loader.
> >> The FreeBSD boot loader only supports booting from the first FreeBSD
> >> slice (on any disk that can be accessed by the BIOS).
> >
> >And should be fixed (I've mentioned this before) to boot from the
> >first ACTIVE (flag 0x80) FreeBSD slice.  Should be a trival amount
> 
> That would mainly break certain configurations.  The active flag
> should only be set for one partition, so you shouldn't have any active
> FreeBSD partitions if you have an active DOS partition.

Right, and if I have an active DOS partition the BIOS is going to
boot the ACTIVE dos partition.  It won't even load the BSD boot
blocks if that is not the active partition.

Any configuration that was broken by this change was broken such
that the BIOS should have not even booted anything!  The BIOS should
have returned a ``No Active Partition'', or gone on to the next
disk drive (yes, AMI bios'es as old as 1982 can boot from drive
0x81 if there are no active partitions on drive 0x80.)

> This should be fixed by adding slice support to the boot loader's
> name parser.  Then you could bounce off the first FreeBSD to any other
> slice by putting a boot loader on the first slice and configuring it
> to boot from slice sN, e.g., "0:sd(0,s5,a)kernel" to boot the first
> logical drive on an extended slice.

Poppy cock, the active flag model should work and not require the
addition of slice choosing support to the boot blocks.  OSBS and
other multiboot loaders will infact set the chosen partition to
active, it is just the brain damaged FreeBSD boot code that ignores
the active flag, and chooses the FIRST BSD parition it finds
no matter what, which is _WRONG_.

-- 
Rod Grimes                                      rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com
Accurate Automation, Inc.                   Reliable computers for FreeBSD