[nycbug-talk] multi-boot madness

[George Georgalis]

On Mon, Mar 14, 2005 at 12:33:49AM -0500, G Rosamond wrote:
>
>On Mar 14, 2005, at 12:28 AM, Kevin Reiter wrote:
>
>>gag works wonders.
>>
>>http://gag.sourceforge.net
>>
>
>I'll try this next time, but from my past and limited experience with 
>multiboots, I just installed FreeBSD last and stuck to that boot 
>manager.
>
>I'm with Charles, in that one box per OS when possible. . . and the 
>exception tends to be on a laptop.

(for the benefit of the OP) if you multiboot with linux, be sure to
install a bootloader 'in the first sector of the boot partition'

bootblocks or gag will get you there from the mbr but without lilo or
grub etc programmed to load the kernel, you're stuck.

bootblocks or gag allow you to choose a slice to boot from, but linux
normally installs the kernel loader in the mbr, if you get to your linux
slice and there is no kernel loader there, it stops.

have not fixed this recently, never mastered installing grub in boot
partition first sector, but lilo is easy enough (eg specify hda4 vs hda)

grub works well for loading the linux kernel, easy to configure easy to
fix broken linux boots, but it's difficult for non typical tasks like
imaging, the procedures and doc are confusing.

I'd use it over lilo on the first sector of linux boot partitions, but
stick with gag or bootblocks in your mbr(s), IMHO.

// George


-- 
George Georgalis, systems architect, administrator Linux BSD IXOYE
http://galis.org/george/ cell:646-331-2027 mailto:george at galis.org