Jeremy C. Reed wrote: > My test laptop has: > > ad0s1 -- NetBSD > ad0s2 -- unused > ad0s3 -- FreeBSD > ad0s4 -- DragonFly > > I used NetBSD to partition ad0s4 for ID 165. The fdisk tool asked me for > the boot label name. I entered "DFly". > > I then used the latest official DragonFly CD "installer" to install to > ad0s4. > > I chose to skip installing the boot manager, since I already had one that > worked for ad0s1 and ad0s3. > > Rebooting gave me a choice for "DFly" but it didn't work and ended up > booting my NetBSD. > > I booted the LiveCD again and ran: > > disklabel -B ad0s4 > > It complained: > > ad0s1: rejecting partition in BSD label: it isn't entirely within the slice
Frankly, I don't know the answer -- but I'm betting that the error message above is a red herring. I say that because I see the same error every time I boot any machine with both NetBSD/OpenBSD and FreeBSD/DFly installed. The two disklabel formats are incompatible because the Net/OpenBSD disklabel begins numbering sectors at the start of the physical disk -- whereas Free/DFlyBSD starts numbering from zero at the beginning of the slice. I've just learned to ignore that error message altogether. > Any ideas on how I can get my ad0s4 partition to boot? I always use GRUB and I've never had any cause to regret it. GRUB doesn't need any boot sectors to be installed because it bypasses them completely. It loads /boot/loader directly from the hard disk in the case of DFly/FreeBSD or loads the NetBSD kernel directly. (It actually does use the OpenBSD bootsector, but that isn't your current problem.) When in doubt: make a GRUB boot floppy and try it before installing GRUB to the hard disk. (Do laptops still have floppy drives? Dunno.)
