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Old 4th June 2008
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aleunix View Post
If in the example on Faq the partition OpenBSD isn't marked as active will be start windows?
I assume you are referring to the fdisk(8) output shown in Section 4.5.2 of the FAQ. Yes, the one FAT32 partition marked active implies execution will attempt to boot that partition whenever the system is next restarted.

If you read the manpage to fdisk(8), you will find that it is the Wintel specification which states that one partition is the maximum number which can be marked as active. The instructions executed in the boot sector will verify that only one partition is marked active before progressing to loading the kernel as specified in the PBR. If zero, or more than one partition are marked as active, an error message is displayed, & further execution is halted if this is the drive identified in the BIOS as being the primary bootable block device.

I suspect the observation you are wanting to confirm is that fdisk(8) can be used as a crude boot manager unto itself, & this is correct. By marking what partition is active, you are determining what partition will be used when booting at the next restart.
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