From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Dec 21 12:35:46 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-31-201-166.mmcable.com [65.31.201.166]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id B713C37B417 for ; Fri, 21 Dec 2001 12:35:40 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 96662 invoked by uid 100); 21 Dec 2001 20:35:39 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15395.40219.395530.155752@guru.mired.org> Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 14:35:39 -0600 To: hawkeyd@visi.com (D J Hawkey Jr) Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Two FreeBSD slices on one HDD? In-Reply-To: <86914604@toto.iv> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA v0.42/Python 2.1.1 (freebsd4) From: "Mike Meyer" 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 D J Hawkey Jr types: > My bad to reply to myself, but I did find some info. > > In article <20011221101718.A7266_sheol.localdomain@ns.sol.net>, > hawkeyd@visi.com writes: > > > > My HDD has two slices (aka, DOS primary partitions), ad0s2 being FreeBSD > > 4.2, and ad0s1 being WinME. I'd like to blow away ad0s1, and install the > > forth-coming FreeBSD 4.5 in that slice (DOS partition). > > > > Does FreeBSD have more than one slice (DOS partition) ID, such that I can > > have two bootable primary partitions (DOS parlance), and bootEZ (whatever > > it's called) will let my choose between them, as though FreeBSD were > > sharing the HDD with some other OS? > > Only one BIOS partition ID. > > From what I have read, go ahead with the install, and when in 'fdisk', > remove ad0s1 (the WinME slice), and replace it with a FreeBSD slice, > marking it bootable. The, in 'disklabel', proceed to set up partitions > within the new ad0s1 slice as usual. > > BUT, will the rest of the install correctly put everything in the new > ad0s1 slice, and not the existing ad0s2 slice? I can't answer that. I built my two-BSD hd from sources and installed that way. > Then, will, bootEZ will see both FreeBSD partitions, and allow booting > either? This I haven't found an answer to. It should see them both, but it will label them both as "FreeBSD". I installed Grub so I could label them as "FreeBSD Current" and "FreeBSD Stable". > > Furthermore, can either then mount the other slices' partitions? > I cannot see why not, unless trying to write to ad0s1 from ad0s2 screws > up due to ad0s1 having DIRPREFS and ad0s2 not? Anyone? No problems at all. You can even have them both use the same swap partition to save a little space. > Is it really this straight-forward, the "Just do it" Nike approach? Except for sysinstall, the answer is yes. I suspect the answer is yes for sysinstall as well. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message