Multiple versions on the same box - same disk

B

bsduni

Hi!

I would like to have a single machine with multiple versions of FreeBSD - say FreeBSD 9.0 and FreeBSD 9.3 - to test compatibility of a software with different versions of FreeBSD.
Please also note that these is an additional requirement that these different versions of FreeBSDs need to have their kernels patched to run this software.

Could anyone provide hints or leads (like URLs) to setup such a single machine with multiple FreeBSD OS versions please?
If required, I can also consider having multiple physical harddrives in that machine.

Thank you in advance.
 
FreeBSD's own boot manager boot0cfg(8) will happily boot from multiple FreeBSD installations on the same disk. But it only works when using the MBR partitioning scheme. Those setups are separate, so having different up-to-date versions is not an issue.
If you have GPT partitions you'll have to install another bootmanager.
 
It's also possible with ZFS by using sysutils/beadm. Which is probably the best option as you can share the drive capacity and aren't limited by the sizes of the individual partitions. With UFS or ZFS there's no need for a separate harddisk (it is possible to use one of course). You can even "share" some of the filesystems ( tip: create a separate filesystem for /home) and the swap partition. It will take a bit of fiddling but it's certainly possible to run two or more versions. A lot of developers have a similar setup for the same reason you want it.
 
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