Hi,
_I am not being able to boot into FreeBSD 5.1 with GRUB. I have an 80 GB
Seagate Barracuda HDD with Debian (sid), Red Hat 8.0 and 9 installed. Grub's
installed in the MBR and my /boot (where GRUB is located) is /dev/hda5
(within 8.3 GB though I have a new motheboard). I boot around 8 different linux kernels with grub and they all load fine.
Even kernels beyond 60 GB are loaded without any problem from ext3 partitions.
(my debian /boot is beyond 60GB). Now I have a FreeBSD slice (hda3) beyond 72
GB. The problem is that my kernel doesn't boot from it. I have tried all
possibilities but have reached no solution as yet. From the GRUB command-line
during boot, when I try setting the root partition manually, grub says partition is unknown type but gives the correct hex value. Seems it is not being able to recognize the UFS partition. After that the boot command fails.

I have another 40 GB hard disk running only FreeBSD 5.1 and even that cant be booted thru GRUB. Earlier versions of FreeBSD used to boot fine thru GRUB. Then the same version of grub showed the correct partition type. I am wondering whether grub fails to boot FreeBSD 5.1! Is this a known issue with grub? Does anyone have any solutions?
Can there be some problem with my disk partitioning? I have edited grub commands, recompiled kernels, also upgraded grub once. No solution yet. I have to set my bios to boot from hdb when i have to boot into bsd.

Bhaskar.

"I have edited grub commands, recompiled kernels, also upgraded grub once. No solution yet."

Here is a bug description in grub that looks like it describes your problem:

http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug.../msg00003.html

If this bug is not fixed in the latest version of grub you might try installing an older version of grub that is pre-bug.

Or you might switch to lilo.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

Hi,
Thanks for the pointer. Don't know how I could miss that! Though the patch mentioned in your link is 3 yrs old, I wonder how the bug can still exist for so long (if it actually is my problem). Will apply the diff and check if it works.
Regards,
Bhaskar

"Though the patch mentioned in your link is 3 yrs old,"

Sorry, I must have not noticed the date.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

Hey,
I found this link dated a few weeks back:
http://www.mail-archive.com/bug-grub.../msg08012.html
Seems to be the same error.

quoted - "Yes. FreeBSD 5.x should use UFS2 as your filesystem, and GRUB simply
does not support that filesystem (yet). For now, you can boot it via
chainloader like Windows."

Its working now!