DragonFly BSD
DragonFly users List (threaded) for 2004-11
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Re: Making a bootable multi-OS DVD with bootmanager


From: fu <fu@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 22:33:41 -0500

Oliver Fromme wrote:
Hi,

I'm currently in the process of creating the master image
for a DVD-ROM (DVD9) that will contain FreeBSD 5.3-Release.
As a special bonus I would like to include a current stable
snapshot of DragonFly, too (Matt announced that he's going
to make a new one this weekend, so that would be perfect).

This opens up several problems.

First, I don't want to mix all the files in the root direc-
tory on the DVD.  That would be an ugly mess, and it might
lead to subtle problems.  As far as FreeBSD is concerned,
sysinstall supports looking into several subdirectories if
it cannot find its installation files in the root, so I can
put all FreeBSD stuff into a subdirectory called "FreeBSD"
or "5.3-RELEASE".

Does the DragonFly installer support something like that,
too?  Unfortunately, I don't have spare hardware available
right now, so I cannot test it.

Second, I would like to install a bootmanager on the DVD
so users can select whether they want to install FreeBSD
or DragonFly.  I'm currently evaluating two possibilities:

 - GRUB:  http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/
 - CD Shell:  http://www.cdshell.org/

According to the docs, both of them should be able to do
what I want.  For FreeBSD, GRUB can load /boot/loader
and start the FreeBSD bootstrap process from there (or,
if that fails, maybe it can chain-load /boot/cdboot).
I still have to test that, though.  CD Shell is supposed
to do it similarly.  It has some additional interesting
features, particularly it can boot memtest86+ from DVD,
which would be nice to have (as a third option in the
bootmanager menu).

Now the question is, do GRUB or CD Shell support DragonFly?
Has someone already done something like that?  Does it
work?  I would be very greatful for any hint or advice.

Best regards
   Oliver

You can use Grub, I have many times , but the cool thing is the BSD boot loader boots just about everything and doesn`t require a degree in Grubology. For Grub, Chainloader +1 will hand it to the partition to boot DFly, or Plan9, or what ever.
What about kernel selection in Linux and such with BSD loader?
Grub to the Root linux part, BSD to the MBR and you`re groovin`,
roll it up, and your ready to ride.




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