From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jan 1 18: 8:58 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6EF6D37B401 for ; Wed, 1 Jan 2003 18:08:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from www.fastmail.fm (www.fastmail.fm [66.111.4.2]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9803B43EA9 for ; Wed, 1 Jan 2003 18:08:55 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from judmarc@fastmail.fm) Received: from www.fastmail.fm (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by localhost.localdomain (Postfix) with ESMTP id B221CFC58; Wed, 1 Jan 2003 21:08:32 -0500 (EST) Received: from 127.0.0.1 ([127.0.0.1] helo=www.fastmail.fm) by fastmail.fm with SMTP; Wed, 01 Jan 2003 21:08:32 -0500 X-Epoch: 1041473312 X-Sasl-enc: lf4RXB0b7fXCTjYC8ZNunw Received: from sparky (dialup-63.214.214.144.Dial1.Philadelphia1.Level3.net [63.214.214.144]) by www.fastmail.fm (Postfix) with ESMTP id E4E2618EBC; Wed, 1 Jan 2003 21:08:30 -0500 (EST) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: edifice Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: How to see bootloader menu name correct? References: Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed From: Jud Date: Wed, 01 Jan 2003 21:09:31 -0500 In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Opera7.0/Win32 M2 BETA2 build 2586 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, 1 Jan 2003 19:54:16 -0500 (EST), John Bleichert wrote: > On Thu, 2 Jan 2003, edifice wrote: >> Subject: How to see bootloader menu name correct? >> >> Dear All, >> >> I install Win2000 and FreeBSD on my machine. When boot, it display: >> F1: ?? >> F3: ?? >> F4: FreeBSD >> How to make the F1 correctly display the name "Windows 2000"? >> >> Best Regards, >> >> Edifice >> -- edifice >> > > I believe the FreeBSD bootloader gets it's Fn labels by reading the > filesystem type of the partitions, and in your case you get ???s because > it doesn't know anything about NTFS. You may be out of luck, unless you > want to hack the FreeBSD bootloader and submmit it back to the project :) > > Seriously though, nobody seems too interested in fixing this issue, > understandably. [snip] [My bad - forgot to copy the list and edifice on my initial reply.] I'd describe the problem differently than the bootloader not knowing anything about NTFS. First, Windows NT, 2000, and XP all share the same filesystem, which MS calls "NTFS." That filesystem type is also used by IBM's OS/2, where it is referred to as "HPFS." I believe QNX may use this type as well.   Bootloaders are severely limited in size. There isn't room to provide for all the possible choices per various filesystem types (as we've seen, 4 or 5 at least for type 7; this isn't the only duplication - type 82, for example, is used by both Sun Solaris and Linux swap). Boot managers like Grub and the one used by MS with NT/W2K/XP get around the size limitation by allowing users to insert names for the various boot items in config files that are not actually part of the bootloader itself. I don't know for sure, but my guess is that rewriting the FreeBSD bootloader as a boot manager with a config file would essentially mean creating from scratch something on the level of Grub. So why do so when Grub is already in the ports? -- Jud To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message