Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 13:24:15 -0400 From: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Multiple versions of FreeBSD on one HDD Message-ID: <v04210103b3ccc6e725ab@[128.113.24.47]> In-Reply-To: <37A6CA97.1F0DA32F@cdsec.com> References: <37A6CA97.1F0DA32F@cdsec.com>
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At 12:55 PM +0200 8/3/99, Graham Wheeler wrote:
>Hi all
>
>I am trying to install both 2.2.8 and 3.2 on a single 17Gb HDD,
>but am not having much luck.
I am also interested in doing things like this, and my initial
attempts didn't work quite the way I had hoped. Earlier I had
a dual-boot setup with WinNT and FreeBSD 2.2.5, using the
booteasy loader. I managed to get that going easily enough,
even though I didn't have any clue about what I was doing, so
after I replaced the HD (for unrelated reasons) I thought I'd
get more ambitious.
So, armed with a brand new hard 4-gig SCSI disk, I installed
WinNT, and had it create several partitions which I expected
to use for other OS's. This install went fine.
I then went to install FreeBSD 2.2.8, only to realize that
all the partitions WinNT created were extended partitions in
one real partition. So, I used the fdisk-part of the install
to blow away those partitions and create three new partitions.
I installed 2.2.8 in one of those, but told it that I wanted
"nothing" done for a boot loader (because I planned to install
PowerBoot, but I didn't have those disks yet). If I booted
off the CD-ROM, I could then switch to this 2.2.8 install and
it worked fine.
The thing is, I couldn't boot up off the hard disk anymore.
Apparently something in the freebsd install resulted in an
invalid partition table. I assumed this was because I had
fdisk-ed the second partition that winNT had created into
three partitions, so I went and reinstalled WinNT in the
first partition. At that point I could boot either system
(using the CD when I wanted to boot off the freebsd system).
I then installed Freebsd 3.2-stable in the third partition.
Since I didn't need to fdisk anything, and I said I didn't
want to install any boot-loader, I figured this would be safe.
Again, I ended up with an unbootable HD. I could boot either
freebsd system by first booting off a CD.
By now the floppies for PowerBoot had come, so I tried
installing that. I could now boot the HD, and PowerBoot can
see the two partitions with freebsd installed (it even
recognizes them as freebsd). Right now, my situation is
that:
- If I select WinNT at the PowerBoot menu, it comes up
fine. Everything looks about as I'd expect.
- If I select 2.2.8 at the PowerBoot menu, it comes up
with one error message about "no /boot/loader", but
then it comes right up in the 2.2.8 system. So this
works fine, although it looks odd.
- If I select 3.2 at the PowerBoot menu, it comes up
with two messages about "invalid partition", one about
"no boot loader", and then it can't automatically boot
up anything. The interesting thing is that I'm in
the 2.2.8 bootloader at this point, not the 3.2 one.
It seems to want to boot 'da(0,a)/kernel', but if I
type in 'da(0,e)/kernel', then it boots up fine.
My last partition is meant for installing OpenBSD, but I
wasn't ready to do that yet. Later I was talking with one
of the other guys here, and I went to show him what I did
by trying to do another freebsd install into that 4th
partition. Much to my surprise, it won't *let* me install
into that partition.
(note that I wanted to try PowerBoot because I also have a
second hard disk, and I want to install Win98 on that one,
along with BeOS and maybe some other OS's. It seemed to
me that multi-disk situations could use something more than
booteasy).
So, my guess is that my primary problem is that I have only a
vague idea of what I'm doing... Where is a good point to start
looking for a better idea? I tried searching the web site for
"multi-boot", but that didn't turn up much. I have a number
of questions from doing this:
1. why does the install turn my HD unbootable? (invalid
partition table). I didn't ask it to re-fdisk anything,
and I didn't ask for it to change my boot loader.
2. I have the BIOS option on so I can boot off larger
hard disks, and indeed it seems I can boot to the
first three partitions. Why can't I get to that final
one?
3. Can I get it so that booting off the third partition
will smoothly boot into 3.2-stable?
4. given the rapidly-expanding size of HD's, would it be
useful to support installs into DOS-style extended
partitions? Or are they a problem which we're better
off to avoid?
---
Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer or drosih@rpi.edu
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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