Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 13:30:26 GMT From: John Baldwin <john@baldwin.cx> To: freebsd-qa@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: bin/48341: [sysinstall] sysinstall deletes mbr although it Message-ID: <200606261330.k5QDUQDe054698@freefall.freebsd.org>
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The following reply was made to PR bin/48341; it has been noted by GNATS. From: John Baldwin <john@baldwin.cx> To: Heiner <h.eichmann@gmx.de> Cc: bug-followup@freebsd.org Subject: Re: bin/48341: [sysinstall] sysinstall deletes mbr although it Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 08:20:33 -0400 On Sunday 25 June 2006 05:26, Heiner wrote: > On Monday 19 June 2006 21:18, John Baldwin wrote: > > Hmm, this is because the menu is not about leaving the MBR completely > > untouched (we couldn't add new slices if we did that!) but instead about > > leaving the boot code in the MBR untouched. Note that the Active flag > > isn't stored in the boot code, but in the partition table. When you > > create the FreeBSD slice in the MBR during installation, it will have > > the Active flag set. You can manually reset the Active flag on the > > That is right. But what are the options? Either I do not have a bootloader > installed. Then "standard" is the correct choice. Or I have other OS > installed and I would like to let the BSD boot manager handle it. > Then "BootMgr" is a good choice. Or I would like let my favorite boot manager > do the job. Then "None" is my choice. Unfortunately my favorite boot manager > will not boot, as the active flag has been changed! I can not think on any > situation, where this behaviour might be usefull! The problem is the active flag isn't part of the boot code, just part of the partition table. I might want to leave the default DOS MBR boot loader present (use "None") but boot FreeBSD, in that case choosing "None" just works. It's not really feasible for the installer to know how custom boot loaders treat the Active flag or intuit which slice the user wants to boot by default. If you want to boot a slice other than FreeBSD it is up to the user to manually mark the other slice as active after adding the FreeBSD slice. This could probably be made clearer in the documentation though. > > Windows partition before exiting that stage of the disk editor and > > things should work as expected. Would you be able to try that out and > > verify that? > > I did. During the fdisk "Allocating Disk Space" of the installation I selected > the windows partition and pressed 'S'. After the installation the windows > partition was still active. So this is a good workaround. > > > Heiner > -- John Baldwin
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