On Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:35:00 -0800, "Overdorf, Sam" <sam.overd...@intel.com>
wrote:
> I have three partitions loaded with different versions of FreeBSD.
> I have the multiboot option working and it shows the following:
>
> F1 FreeBSD
> F2 FreeBSD
> F3 FreeBSD
>
> Is there a way that I can change the description from "FreeBSD" to
> something like:
>
> F1 FreeBSD 7.1
> F2 FreeBSD 7.0
> F3 FreeBSD 6.4
Not with the default boot0 loader. The strings you see are hardcoded in
the limited space of the master boot record[1], and the assembler source
for the 512 bytes of the MBR even uses 'overlapping strings' to cover
other BSD-related (but not necessarily FreeBSD-specific) partition types
using as little space as possible.
You can read the source of the `boot0' MBR in x86 assembler through the
web interface of Subversion[2]. Look near line 623 for the code that
reads:
/*
* Offsets that match the known types above, used to point to the
* actual partition name. The last entry must point to os_misc,
* which is used for non-matching names.
*/
.byte os_linux-. # 131, Linux
.byte os_freebsd-. # 165, FreeBSD
.byte os_bsd-. # 166, OpenBSD
.byte os_bsd-. # 169, NetBSD
If you want longer names, or even a graphical boot menu, you can always
install some other boot loader. AFAIK, two of the most popular options
are `sysutils/grub' or `sysutils/syslinux'.
Note that the version of GRUB we have in the Ports is a bit old. It is
a version of GRUB 0.9X, and development of GRUB has moved to GRUB 2.X
now[3]. It seems that the `sysutils/syslinux' port tracks the vendor
releases more aggressively.
Notes:
------
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record
[2]
http://svn.freebsd.org/viewvc/base/head/sys/boot/i386/boot0/boot0.S?annotate=HEAD
[3] http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/
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