On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Jason Dixon <ja...@dixongroup.net> wrote: > On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 11:05:26AM -0400, Donald Allen wrote: >> On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Jason Dixon <ja...@dixongroup.net> wrote: >> > On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 09:10:58AM -0400, Donald Allen wrote: >> >> >> >> So, I'd like to ask why grub is apparently unsupported on the amd64 >> >> architecture? And I would suggest that grub provides a simple solution >> >> to dual-booting OpenBSD on a system that had been previously >> >> dual-booted with Windows and something else and where the Windows >> >> version of the mbr is no longer present. I'd be happy to provide the >> >> documentation for the procedure to add to the install guide, if the >> >> developers are interested. >> > >> > Save yourself some headaches. ?Use GAG. >> > >> > http://gag.sourceforge.net/ >> >> I looked over the documentation. Yes, for dual-booting OpenBSD with >> Windows, this looks fine, very nice. And I'll concede that it's a bit >> easier to configure than grub (it guides you through the >> configuration, rather than your having to make up a menu.lst), but >> when there's a grub package available, as there is with i386 OpenBSD, >> the difference isn't great, especially for someone like me with years >> of experience with grub, or if good documentation is available >> explaining how to do it. >> >> Though it isn't important in the Windows/OpenBSD case, it appears that >> GAG is less general than grub, in the sense that it is assuming >> there's a loader in the partition boot record of every partition you >> want to boot and appears to always use the grub chainloader technique. >> This is not a problem for OpenBSD, which installs its bootloader in >> its partition boot record when you tell it during installation that >> you aren't going to use the whole disk. But it is a problem if you >> want to, say, triple-boot Windows, OpenBSD, and Linux. Linux will >> require installing grub in its partition boot record, as the GAG >> author notes in his document. In that situation, it would make more >> sense, I think, to skip GAG and let the Linux installer install grub >> in the mbr for booting all three. In that setup, Linux would be booted >> by grub directly, not via a secondary loader. > > I've used GAG to multi-boot OpenBSD, Linux, Solaris and Windows. Yes, I > use it as a first stage bootloader. So what?
You have to install a second-stage bootloader, so why not use one bootloader to do the whole job rather than two? That's what.
