[FreeNAS] Multiboot FreeBSD 9 and 7.xx

danzi · #1 December 20th, 2011, 23:14

Hi All,

I have a FreeNAS box, with version 7.2.8191 (latest stable from 7.xx) and I now have it installed on a 5 gig partition with an 8 gig swap space. On the rest of the disk I'd like to build a normal FreeBSD 9 install.

The disk is 250 gig SATA in a HP Proliant Microserver. The rest are dada disks currently used by FreeNAS (ZFS version would mismatch with v9RC3 but for now I wouldn't use the data disks with the new install).

I am not familiar with multibooting two separate FreeBSD instances, would really appreciate some insight. As far as I know there could only be 4 slices on one disk, but the 8.2 installer automatic partitioner creates 4 slices for itself alone...

Many thanks,
DanZi

**DutchDaemon** · #2 December 20th, 2011, 23:24

**wblock@** · #3 December 21st, 2011, 01:04

bsdinstall (the 9.0 installer) uses GPT partitioning by default, which allows up to 128 partitions. But it's not compatible with the FreeBSD multi-boot loader. The most common multi-boot loader would be Grub2, I think, but have not tried it. But why would you need to multi-boot FreeNAS?

danzi · #4 December 21st, 2011, 09:06

Well, I have freenas 7.2 and 8.0.1 is not to my liking. There are quite a lot of things that I'd like to try, e.g different multimedia servers, that FreeNAS doesn't have neither in 7 nor in v8.

My only concern is the zfs version. FreeNAS 7 has v13 (and my disks are currently running this one - 3x 1,5 Tb, 1 is a stand alone ZFS volume, the other two are mirrored - I wanted RaidZ, but I had a lot of data on one of the disks that I couldn't move anywhere else :S)

So ZFS version 13 in FreeNAS 7
ZFS version 15 in FreeNAS 8
and in BSD 9 there's ZFS ver 28

I now have 'asked' the BSD 9 installer to put everything on the remaining slice. There is no however a loader that would boot it. I now have the folowing:
(partition 2 has FreeBSD 9 but I cannot yet boot it, but can mount it when booting FreeNAS 7)

Code:

******* Working on device /dev/ad10 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=484521 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=484521 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Media sector size is 512
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 1 is:
sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
    start 63, size 10474317 (5114 Meg), flag 80 (active)
	beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
	end: cyl 651/ head 254/ sector 63
The data for partition 2 is:
sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
    start 10474380, size 461145825 (225168 Meg), flag 0
	beg: cyl 652/ head 0/ sector 1;
	end: cyl 684/ head 254/ sector 63
The data for partition 3 is:
sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
    start 471620205, size 16771860 (8189 Meg), flag 0
	beg: cyl 685/ head 0/ sector 1;
	end: cyl 704/ head 254/ sector 63
The data for partition 4 is:
<UNUSED>

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