Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2012 21:41:53 GMT From: Zbigniew <zbigniew2011@gmail.com> To: freebsd-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.org Subject: misc/172413: Boot "loader" should accept additional parameters Message-ID: <201210062141.q96Lfr2K080862@red.freebsd.org> Resent-Message-ID: <201210062150.q96Lo3xI013671@freefall.freebsd.org>
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>Number: 172413
>Category: misc
>Synopsis: Boot "loader" should accept additional parameters
>Confidential: no
>Severity: non-critical
>Priority: low
>Responsible: freebsd-bugs
>State: open
>Quarter:
>Keywords:
>Date-Required:
>Class: sw-bug
>Submitter-Id: current-users
>Arrival-Date: Sat Oct 06 21:50:02 UTC 2012
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator: Zbigniew
>Release: 9.0
>Organization:
>Environment:
FreeBSD Trurl 9.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE #0: Wed Oct 3 17:39:02 CEST 2012 root@Trurl:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/GENERIC i386
>Description:
Installed recently FreeBSD 9.0 - and I've got a problem: while booting, "loader" somehow gets incorrect currdevice value, stopping boot process. It does get "disk1s6a", but it should be "disk1s7a" ("lsdev" reports such number). I can boot system, when I set currdev "manually", then type "boot". Of course, loader won't read its config files, when not having access to root directory.
Having multiple OS-es on HDD, I'm using GRUB for booting. My FreeBSD section looks like:
root (hd0,5,a)
kernel /boot/loader
No, I can't change "root partition" - the solution would be to allow to pass the boot parameters to loader, like this:
kernel /boot/loader currdev=disk1s7a
I mean: each variable, that can be later examined by "show", should be possible to be changed in such GRUBs command-line, by passing sequence of such parameters, separated by spaces. Such ability is present since years in Linux - no problem there with passing boot parameters - why not in FreeBSD?
BTW: I would to mention here, that at least two essential utilities - I mean boot0cfg and dumpon - (but maybe more of them) have "artifically" imposed a limit to handle at most fourth partition. It's an obvious nonsense, since I've got by now FreeBSD installed - and working - on "logical partition" 6 created inside "physical partition" 4. Why the most essential tools are ignoring the fact, that nowadays we're able to have - say - 20 partitions, not just four?
The man page for dumpon is signed "12 may 1995", which suggests to me, that this utility has been left untouched since that time. Maybe 17 years ago keeping the limit "four partitions" was reasonable, but today HDDs of terabyte capacity aren't anything extraordinary. Time, and the work conditions, have changed - therefore such changes should be reflected in such basic tools, needed for proper disk partitioning and setting the boot process.
I would to add, that on the very same partition I had a few days ago NetBSD installation, which had no problem with the partition number whatsoever. I've replaced Net- with FreeBSD, and since the very start such strange problems "we don't like your partitions schema". Almost twenty years later it's still not possible to install FreeBSD onto chosen partition the straight way, and then to run the system without additional "adventures". Being very essential thing, this really needs a fix!
>How-To-Repeat:
Just by booting FreeBSD from some "unusul" partition (the one with "high" number)
>Fix:
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted:
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