9.1-RELEASE issues

P

penguinhead

I installed FreBSD 9.1-RELEASE today. The OS was installed in the fourth primary partition (ada0s4). I wasn't asked for any bootloader during install. I remember 7.x and 8.x releases of FreeBSD had a very basic bootloader which was simple text based. Even after formatting the FreeBSD partition, that bootloader would remain intact.

The OS booted fine, but I could not boot Windows which was on the first partition. I removed the FreeBSD partition and still could not boot into Windows, I had to install it again.

Secondly, I tried to install X11 from the DVD using sysinstall, but it kept telling me that the disc was outdated and it could not retrieve /index file. Any workaround to this?

Thanks in advance.
 
You are working from outdated instructions. sysinstall(8) is retired. The new installer, bsdinstall(8), does not give an option to install the multi-boot loader. That can be done after FreeBSD boots or with the Shell mode of the installer. See boot0cfg(8). EasyBCD is a more powerful way to do the same thing from Windows. Even better is to install multiple operating systems as VMs with VirtualBox, making hardware support easier and allowing more than one to run at the same time.

X11 is not installed with sysinstall(8) any more, either. The Handbook shows how to install X from ports or packages.
 
I actually reinstalled Windows and VirtualBox is what I am using now.

If the installer does not install any bootloader or anything over the MBR, why did the system boot directly to the FreeBSD partition when Windows was in the first partition?

I'm installing X11 through the network, using NAT.
 
penguinhead said:
If installer does not install any bootloader or anything over the MBR, why did the system boot directly to the FreeBSD partition when Windows was in the first partition?
Click to expand...
It does install a bootloader (/boot/boot0).

What @wblock@ said is that it doesn't install a "multi-boot loader".
 
Last edited by a moderator:
FILE]Right! Got it! So basically, the one installed by default is /boot/mbr? And by running boot0cfg, I can install the multi-boot loader that goes into /boot/boot0?
 
Yes basically. The contents of /boot/boot0 are written on the first sector of the disk (the MBR) by boot0cfg(8) preserving the partition table at the end of the MBR. You can't just dd(1) it in place because that would destroy the partition table. You can also use gpart(8) for installing the /boot/boot0 multiboot loader:

gpart bootcode -b /boot/boot0 ada0

That would install the /boot/boot0 loader with default settings.
 
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