I've brought back to life a P3 I got at a school auction years back to
use for testing software under various operating systems(presently all
bsd) on i386. My main server is FreeBSD/amd64. The P3 has a 10 gig
hard drive I'm not intending to upgrade(unless I buy an sata hard drive
and find that the bootloader works for atapi sata hard drives in 7.0).
I've currently partitioned it into four partitions, with FreeBSD,
OpenBSD, and DragonFlyBSD. The fourth is unused at the moment, and I
left it open for a fourth system to test on, but I partitioned it as
FreeBSD. Here comes the problem. The boot menu currently looks like
this.
F1: FreeBSD
F2: BSD
F3: FreeBSD
F4: FreeBSD
Given the minimalistic nature of the 512 byte bootloader, and my
understandings of the bootloader itself, it would be difficult to adapt
to suit my needs. I doubt I'll be installing any linux on the fourth
partition as linux/i386 is well tested(for this software anyway). As
well, I have considered getting a null serial cable to connect the P3
to my amd64 box and, aside from ssh, manage it that way. At least
until I get a larger hard drive for my main system that runs 24/7, I do
not want to use netbooting. I also may want to install another
operating system on the fourth partition(not necessarily BSD, or else
I'd automatically choose netbsd). Also, I may not be in the room when
I reboot into another operating system, and I know that net booting
would be best in this regard. Is there a good bootloader that would
suit my needs, of easily and mostly remotely(such as via ssh) being
able to control which operating system to boot next? I almost wonder
if FreeBSD's loader could be repurposed for my needs but my forth isn't
that good.
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