Date: Sat, 14 Nov 2020 11:32:54 -0800 From: Weaver <weaver@riseup.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Booting multiple BSDs. Message-ID: <0b9db732acb3c77674566a189cc387b4@riseup.net> In-Reply-To: <20201114113026.5e093b5f.freebsd@edvax.de> References: <fecab1ac1f5589d9f2122ae2c37edfac@riseup.net> <b5e74b41-cfc5-2f8b-d5e8-6d77c93d4f66@holgerdanske.com> <3e235e4f8da5018abbd1d05a1976c7a9@riseup.net> <a1c955d3-4d5e-17d2-399f-b0b483e5b02b@holgerdanske.com> <20201114113026.5e093b5f.freebsd@edvax.de>
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On 14-11-2020 20:30, Polytropon wrote: > On Fri, 13 Nov 2020 19:02:29 -0800, David Christensen wrote: >> I am confident that there are several boot managers, likely one for each >> of those four OS's, that can find multiple bootable OS drives/ slices/ >> partitions and allow you to boot the OS of your choice. > > First of all, it's important to understand the different stages > of OS booting, as well as the previous stage, likely involving > UEFI. In order to select (!) from multiple operating systems, > certain things must be neatly prepared or nothing will work > as intended. > > There is a nice write-up by Manish Jain that deals with multi- > booting FreeBSD, Linux, and "Windows", but in case you do not > want a "Windows", leave out the corresponding parts - it will > work in a similar way with multiple BSDs or Linusi, Linuxens, > or Linuxera. ;-) > > Document here: > > https://github.com/bourne-again/TripleBoot-UEFI/blob/master/00-TripleBoot-UEFI.pdf > > In case you do _not_ have UEFI (i. e., you're using BIOS-based > systems), tools like Grub2 can be really helpful as boot manager. > It's easy to configure. > > > >> But, my >> experience is that keeping them all running is an exercise in "infinite >> bug propagation" > > "Get the worst out of all worlds!" :-) > > It doesn't matter if you have a multi-OS setting based on > bare metal or in VMs - each OS you run will require a certain > amount of attention if you want to actually _use_ it for a > specific purpose instead of just "booting it". > > > >> I would remove three of those drives and run one OS at a time. > > In ye olden times, when BIOS was the thing in PC world, some > BIOS vendors had a drive management option integrated: You > could simply logically switch off drives, so they were still > powered on, but not detected anymore, so the only drive (and > maybe the data exchange drive) active were recognized, and > the OS was thinking it was the only one available. Go to BIOS, > switch off disk 1, switch on disk 2, and reboot - a totally > different OS boots, with no possibility to interfere (!) or > to "repair" (!!!) other system's disk content. > > Today, you have PF12 boot selection. :-) Great! Thanks for that. Harry Weaver. -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀
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