The FreeBSD Boot Manager
The FreeBSD boot manager can be installed during the installation to allow you to boot multiple operating systems. After the install, the boot manager can be configured with the boot0cfg program.
boot0cfg is command-line driven. Fortunately, you probably do not need to be concerned with most of the options. There are a couple of options that you might be interested in, though.
boot0cfg -B will install the boot manager onto the hard disk's MBR. This is one way to restore the boot manager if Windows should wipe it out. Of course, you would have to boot from a FreeBSD boot disk to use this if the boot manager had been wiped out. In addition, if you wish to make changes to the boot manager configuration, you will need to reinstall it using this command, followed by the changes you wish to make. The following list (see Table 3.1) of options is supported for making changes to the boot manager configuration:
Table 3.1 Boot Manager Configuration Options
Option |
Description |
---|---|
-v |
boot0cfg will be more verbose about what it is doing. |
-b image |
Where image is the name of the boot image to use. The default is /boot/boot0. |
-d drive |
Where drive is the drive number used by the PC's BIOS for referencing the disk. Usually this is 0x80 for the first drive, 0x81 for the second, and so on. |
-f file |
Where file is the name of a file that the original MBR should be backed up to in case there are problems. If the file already exists, it will be truncated. |
The -o option is also supported and it contains a comma-separated list of options. Here are some of the options:
Table 3.2 Boot Manager Configuration Options
Option |
Description |
---|---|
packet |
If the PC's BIOS supports it, this will tell boot0cfg to use int 0x13 extensions instead of CHS for disk IO. This will get around the 1024 cylinder boot limit described previously. However, if the PC's BIOS does not support this option, it may cause the system to hang on the next reboot. |
noupdate |
By default, the boot manager can write to the MBR and update it (to set the active flag, etc). This can cause problems if you have hardware antivirus support enabled that prevents writing to the MBR and such. The noupdate option will prevent the boot manager from attempting to write to the MBR. |
boot0cfg also supports the -s n option, where n is a number from 1 to 5 that specifies the default slice (commonly referred to as partitions in MS-DOS/Windows) to boot if no selection is made. The -t n option is also supported, where n is a number representing the number of "ticks" to wait before booting the default operating system. There are approximately 18.2 ticks in a second.