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/
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
