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Old 28th May 2008
Sunsawe Sunsawe is offline
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Question How to modify the boot loader?

Hi,

I have a multi FreeBSD boot on my box. I noticed that the boot loader can "remember" the last system that has been started.
I would like to know how i could, within the system, modify this.

How to select which system would be started by default at next reboot?

Thanks
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Old 28th May 2008
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ephemera ephemera is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sunsawe View Post
Hi,

I have a multi FreeBSD boot on my box. I noticed that the boot loader can "remember" the last system that has been started.
I would like to know how i could, within the system, modify this.

How to select which system would be started by default at next reboot?

Thanks
use fdisk -a to make the partition from which you want to boot the active partition.
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Old 28th May 2008
Sunsawe Sunsawe is offline
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maybe i was not clear, i don't want to modify any slice thing.

I just want to modify the boot loader to choose which system would be started. I could as well have a linux or a windows system on and I would like to be able to choose them as well.
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Old 28th May 2008
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tuck tuck is offline
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boot0cfg(8)
To boot slice 2 on the next boot:

boot0cfg -s 2 ad0

Since "-o update" is default the change should be written to MBR until you change it again.
But I didn't test it so I don't know if it's just for the next boot.
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Old 28th May 2008
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robbak robbak is offline
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The FreeBSD Boot manager (the bootloader is a different beast that ocours just before the kernel is loaded) is very simple, and is this way by design. FreeBSD's boot Manager is contained within the MBR (Master Boot Record of "Boot Sector"- most others use a boot sector to simply locate and call another executable stored elsewhere.

While this makes FreeBSD's more robust - You can wipe and replace all partitions on a drive without killing it - it does mean that the space for the boot manager is very limited - 446 Bytes to be precise - So it cannot be very intelligent. I hope you will now understand why this step seems so primitive.

However, you can configure it, using the boot0cfg program. From my reading of man boot0cfg(8), it is limited. You can usethis command to set the default boot slice for the next boot:
Code:
boot0cfg -s3
. This should set the third slice (the third entry in the boot list) to be the default. The man page seems to suggest that this is only for the next boot, and default-to-last takes over from there: Other references suggest that this does set a default, but, significantly, there is no command mentioned to unset a default. Note that this is soley from reading the man page - I have not tried it, or read it anywhere.

If that fails, your options are to let well enough alone, or install some other, more complex boot loader, like grub or lilo, which are all-singing and dancing boot loaders. There are even fully graphical boot loaders for true WIMPs.

edit: thanks tuck! try
Code:
boot0cfg -s 4 -o noupdate
should set the default permanently, and
Code:
boot0cfg -o update
should set it back to default-to-last.
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Last edited by robbak; 28th May 2008 at 11:41 PM.
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Old 29th May 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sunsawe View Post
maybe i was not clear, i don't want to modify any slice thing.

I just want to modify the boot loader to choose which system would be started. I could as well have a linux or a windows system on and I would like to be able to choose them as well.
the boot0 loader "remembers" the partition you chose for boot last time by making it the active partition.
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