On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 7:38 AM, Leo Baltus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Op 21/05/2008 om 01:10:05 +0300, schreef Imre Oolberg : >> Some time ago i did experiment with dual-booting (actually >> multi-booting) from one harddisk several OpenBSD instances, for the sake >> of fun. I settled to using dualboot OpenBSD to make upgrades more >> suitable for me (just unpacking new distribution's file sets under /mnt >> mounted empty partition and rebooting). > > Right, that's what I am aiming at. > >> But as i see it there is to ways of having multiple root i.e. a >> partitions on one physical harddisk >> >> 1. Use only one fdisk partition and in it one OpenBSD root is normal a >> partition and another is in the same disklabel, say g. And so for >> example in this disklabel a, d, e, f partitions belong to one instance >> and g is another (consisting of one filesystem). Two instances share >> only swap partition. >> >> To select between them you need to say at boot> prompt >> >> boot> boot hd0a:/bsd >> >> or >> >> boot> boot hd0g:/bsd >> >> 2. Use severaly fdisk partitions, each has its own disklabel and this >> disklabel is dedicated to one OpenBSD instance. OpenBSD bootloader is on >> >> To select between instances you need to use grub bootloader from binary >> packages >> >> # pkg_add grub > > Ah, good OLD grub to the rescue. Thanks, I was staring at openbsd's > boot, but it doesn't seem to have the configurability that e.g. grub > has. > >> It goes like this that grub's first stage is in the harddisk's MBR and >> openbsd bootloader's first stage is installed into each fdisk partition, >> i.e. you use chainloading. >> >> See also >> >> /usr/local/share/doc/grub/README.OpenBSD >> /usr/local/share/examples/grub/menu.lst >> >> Essential is to understand that OpenBSD uses first fdisk's OpenBSD A6 >> disklabel it sees. Thats why grub fiddles with them. > > I am now totally confused about openbsd disk device naming schema. > > As I now see it /dev/wd0a refers tho the first ide disk with id 6B > (OpenBSD), label a. As it is the one elected by boot to be the rootfs. > It would make more sense to me to have en naming schema, which refers to > > wd$idedisk$partition$label > > Now, how can I mount, let's say, the fourth partition, on which I only > want menu.lst to reside on. this can bee a tiny filesystem, with no OS. > > So I can > mkfs /dev/$whatever > mount /dev/$whatever /grub > cp /usr/local/share/examples/grub/menu.lst /grub > > and move on. > >> Leo Baltus wrote: >> >I would like to have more than one openbsd root filesystem on my >> >hardrive. Could somebody please explain how to go about this? >> > >> >In a linux environment I could set up 2 lv's and point to each of them >> >by kernel commandlines. >> > >> >Using openbsd I could use multiple bios-partitions each having an a: label >> >but how do I tel the bootloader to use a specific partition? >> > >> >Maybe there is a way I didn't think of, please let me know. >> > > > -- > Leo Baltus > >
Have you also considered http://gag.sourceforge.net ? Worth a look at and very simple to setup/configure/use with almost any number of OS's in a multiboot scenario. Just my $0.02.
