Switching from Arch to FreeBSD

[scottro]

I've found it fairly easy to dual boot. I usually have one or possibly two Linux installs, and use one of their grubs with a custom /boot/grub (or grub2 in Fedora's case)/custom.cfg

I have a little page on grub2, anyone interested can just search for FreeBSD on the page.

http://www.srobb.net/grub2.html

In a nutshell, you can either use the chainloader syntax or kfreebsd /boot/loader. (Which I prefer, because if you use chainloader, and put a second FreeBSD version on the drive, it will only boot the last one installed).

 

[TiberiusDuval]

PC-BSD uses Grub directly without chainloading, it just gives right arguments for Grub to do its work...something like this:

submenu "PC-BSD (default) - 2014-07-01 17:26" {
  menuentry "Normal Bootup" {
  insmod zfs
  search --no-floppy -s -l tank
  kfreebsd /ROOT/default/@/boot/kernel/kernel
  kfreebsd_loadenv /ROOT/default@/boot/device.hints
  kfreebsd_module /ROOT/default/@/boot/zfs/zpool.cache type=/boot/zfs/zpool.cache
  set kFreeBSD.vfs.root.mountfrom=zfs:tank/ROOT/default
  kfreebsd_module_elf /ROOT/default/@/boot/kernel/crypto.ko
  kfreebsd_module_elf /ROOT/default/@/boot/kernel/aesni.ko
  kfreebsd_module_elf /ROOT/default/@/boot/kernel/geom_eli.ko
  kfreebsd_module_elf /ROOT/default/@/boot/kernel/zfs.ko
  kfreebsd_module_elf /ROOT/default/@/boot/modules/nvidia.ko
  kfreebsd_module_elf /ROOT/default/@/boot/kernel/opensolaris.ko
  kfreebsd_module_elf /ROOT/default/@/boot/kernel/tmpfs.ko
  kfreebsd_module_elf /ROOT/default/@/boot/kernel/linux.ko
  kfreebsd_module_elf /ROOT/default/@/boot/kernel/geom_journal.ko
  kfreebsd_module_elf /ROOT/default/@/boot/kernel/geom_mirror.ko
  kfreebsd_module_elf /ROOT/default/@/boot/kernel/ums.ko
  set kFreeBSD.bootfile="kernel"
  set kFreeBSD.kernel="kernel"
  set kFreeBSD.kernel_options=""
  set kFreeBSD.kernelname="/boot/kernel/kernel"
  set kFreeBSD.module_path="/boot/kernel;/boot/modules"
  set kFreeBSD.kern.ipc.shmseg="1024"
  set kFreeBSD.kern.ipc.shmmni="1024"
  set kFreeBSD.kern.maxproc="10000"
  set kFreeBSD.legal.intel_ipw.license_ack="1"
  set kFreeBSD.legal.intel_iwi.license_ack="1"
  set kFreeBSD.legal.realtek.license_ack="1"
  set kFreeBSD.hint.acpi_throttle.0.disabled="1"
  set kFreeBSD.machdep.disable_mtrrs="1"
  set kFreeBSD.kern.geom.eli.visible_passphrase="2"
  set kFreeBSD.kern.cam.scsi_delay="500"
  set kFreeBSD.hw.memtest.tests="0"
  set kFreeBSD.kern.vty="vt"
  set kFreeBSD.grub.platform="$grub_platform"
  set kFreeBSD.kern.geom.eli.passphrase="$pass"

That is from my PC-BSD 10.1 /boot/grub/grub.cfg