Hi

This may be the wrong thread but does anyone have experience of dual booting Fedora and PC-BSD? I researched the question and it looked fairly easy to dual boot if one choice the BSD bootloader, but this was not the case, I lost the ability to boot Fedora and was not able to boot BSD either, but could boot my Windows drive!

I have reinstalled Fedora, but I do not know how to configure Grub to load BSD. Anyone have experience with this?

Otto

I don't see any problem. Just add option for PC-BSD boot partition and done.
Read some Grub howto to do that. It is pretty simple. I use Grub to boot 4-5 OSes.
OpenSUSE 10.1, OpenSUSE 10.1 XEN, Fedora Core 5, PC-BSD, NexentaOS, Windows XP, Memory check program,SUSE Fail safe.

These are part of options that i have in my GRUB installed.

managed to get grub to boot freeBSD today but it took a while, not used to BSD's subpartitions.
man grub is very helpfull tells you how to boot different flavours of BSD but I didn't see PC-BSD in there.
On that computer I have centos3 on hda and freeBSD on hdb, these are the lines I added to Centos's /boot/grub/grub.conf

title freeBSD
root (hd1,a)
kernel /boot/loader

I arrived at this by experimenting on the grub command line, (press "e" on the grub menu screen, then "c" for a comand line). With the grub manual beside me. The grub command's got a great tab function that gives you the possibilities for that line.

Hi nhydra and decrepited

Thanks for the replies and I will give them a go. I have one more question how do i find the number of the partition for PC-BSD. MY linux drive is partition, as suggested by decrepited boot, swap, /, free space, and PC-bsd. my config looks like this

Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd1,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sdb2
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=15
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img
title Other
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

So I would place
title freeBSD
root (hd1,a)
kernel /boot/loader

under the last entry?

Thanks for you help

Otto

log in as root using su -
note the "-" sign.
then do fdisk -l
that should list all your partitions and give you a guide when using the grub command line. My fdisk didn't show the BSD sub partitions, but grub does. So say fdisk -l gives hdb 3 as BSD
try on the grub command line entering,
grub> root (hd1,2 then press tab, (may be more than once) if that's right grub should return the sub partitions ie a b c etc

Yes when you get the grub command to work (boot BSD) transfer that to grub.conf, doesn't matter where you put it, if "other" is a windows entry you're using, you can change "other"to "windows" or something more explicit. If there's no windows put it in front of title other

Hi Decrepid

I have success with the fdisk, but not with grub> root. I have just worked out how to get into grub, when booting up, but I am not sure what to put in. The fdisk gave the following result:
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 9728 78140128+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 14 1288 10241437+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 1289 2703 11365987+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb4 2704 9730 56438896+ a5 FreeBSD
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb5 1289 1428 1124518+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
What should I be putting in a the grub "c" command line? Sorry to bother you with this, but I feel I am learning a lot, and there is only one step to go.

Thanks

Otto

No worries Otto, I'm learning with you!

bsd is on sdb4, I think in grub terminology (it starts from "0" instead of "1") that should be (hd1,3) so try grub> root (hd1,3) then press tab, and see what that does. With any luck you'll get a list of sub partitions a, b, etc. if so try (hd1,3,a).
Then enter kernel on the next line and hit tab again, if that comes up with a pile of directories with "boot" amongst them then add /boot/loader on the next line type boot and hit enter, (with fingers crossed!!!!)
Feel free to experiment here nothing you do is permanent and I'm fairly sure you can't do any harm, grub will just report an error when you get it wrong, with an option to return to the command line.

My problem is that my freebsd partion was the first and only on that HD and (hd1,0a) or (hd1,0,a) didn't work but (hd1,a) did so I don't know how that affects your partition number sdb4, may be you could try the same as mine perhaps it's the alphabetical character that's important not the numbers. Let us know what you find out.
Mike

Hi decrepit

I am very sorry for the delay in replying, but I have been working a lot and not had time. I now have BSd loading at boot up, yepee. Thank you so much for your help. hd1,3,a did the trick. The security and intalling of software is very impressive. The only problems I have are;
1. the monitor I am not able to change the setting for my monitor, I am stuck with 1024 x what and a freq of 59. I have found stuff saying about changing the xorg.conf, but have not done this before. Have you?
2. I cannot install my usb printer (epson C64) the intall programme does not provide a url for the USB.
I sure these can be overcome. Once again thank you for you r pratience and concern to to help
What do you think of PC-BSD?
.

Otto

G'Day Otto
Glad you're booting at last. I'll have to make a note about hd1,3,a
You're further ahead tham me now. Because I've successfully installed Fedora, SuSe, Mepis and ubuntu, on 4 -5gig partitions I only used an old 4gig drive for free-BSD, (not PC-BSD, don't know what the difference is). There doesn't seem to be enough room to install a GUI, this is a strange system, it just installs the basics during initial install then you have to do the rest by hand, so maybe I'm doing something wrong.
What size partition is youre on???

Guess we should move off this forum it's getting off topic, I'll send you an email.

Hi

I don't think it is off topic. I am using a 10gig partition. From what I have read you need at least 5gig. Yes the having to install most packages once the base system is installed is strange, but I think Gentoo linux is the same sort of process.

Otto

Unfortunately I think the forum moderators may think differently, they probably let us get away with discussing how to set up FC5 to boot BSD. But when it comes to just talking about BSD, that's another matter.

Hi

Point taken. Thanks

Otto