Re: Booting more than 4 OSes from a hard disk?
Windows 2000+ can boot on an extended partition as can linux, the BSDs, I think OS/2 warp+ can as well. So you can still only have 4 primary partitions, but you probably only need one that has a bootloader like GRUB on it marked active and the OSs installed all on extended partitions. I've even supprisingly confirmed if GRUB is installed windows won't install it's own bootloader. At least with Win2000sp4 this was the case the one time I tried... I would use GRUB cause its simple, fits on a floppy and is easy to install from that booting floppy. It shouldn't require any special booting options other then boot from harddrive. I would guess BSD doesn't care where it boots from in terms of sectors on the HD, but making a bootloader do this is something I wouldn't be able to answer. Although I know Grub allows you to chainload an arbritary number of sectors from the bootsector so I would look into that for exotic boots as you allude too. -brian --- Girish Venkatachalam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dear all, I was wondering if the 4 primary parition booting limit still exists. Is it possible to have Windoze Linux FreeBSD OpenBSD NetBSD on the same box in such a way that we can boot into any of them? I am particularly interested in the x86 arch with IDE disks. I think this is possible on other archs with SCSI. What boot manager am I supposed to use? Does it require setting something on the BIOS? Does FreeBSD support booting from a point way off the first sector? Thanks. regards, Girish __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Booting more than 4 OSes from a hard disk?
Master boot records are limited to four which is where the limit comes from. It is theoretically possible to have the MBR point to a new disk location where you could have a boot manager that supports unlimited boot partitions. But that requires all the booting is in software and outside the BIOS. A simple solution is to use 2 disks. Each with four partitions. The FreeBSD bootmanager will offer to boot from disk2. On disk 2 you can have your remaining OS's. -Derek At 10:40 AM 8/8/2006, Girish Venkatachalam wrote: Dear all, I was wondering if the 4 primary parition booting limit still exists. Is it possible to have Windoze Linux FreeBSD OpenBSD NetBSD on the same box in such a way that we can boot into any of them? I am particularly interested in the x86 arch with IDE disks. I think this is possible on other archs with SCSI. What boot manager am I supposed to use? Does it require setting something on the BIOS? Does FreeBSD support booting from a point way off the first sector? Thanks. regards, Girish __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Booting more than 4 OSes from a hard disk?
Girish Venkatachalam wrote: Dear all, I was wondering if the 4 primary parition booting limit still exists. Is it possible to have Windoze Linux FreeBSD OpenBSD NetBSD on the same box in such a way that we can boot into any of them? I am particularly interested in the x86 arch with IDE disks. I think this is possible on other archs with SCSI. What boot manager am I supposed to use? Does it require setting something on the BIOS? Does FreeBSD support booting from a point way off the first sector? Thanks. regards, Girish __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] I *think* GAG can do this, though I have never actually personally tried it. If I ever use a boot loader though, GAG is my first choice. It's incredibly simple to install and configure. http://gag.sourceforge.net/ -- Mark Cullen [EMAIL PROTECTED] BSc (Hons), Computer Science ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
