Hi :) my apologies for cross-posting this to several Linux mailing lists. I need a boot loader for Linux, that is comfortable to use for my needs, a Linux multi-boot with trillions of Linux installs, trillions ^ 2 kernels and (trillions ^ 2) * 1024 entries with different boot options, so something as GRUB 2 is unusable for my needs. Until now I was comfortable with GRUB legacy, but now I add a FreeBSD install to my machine and against the claims at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_boot_loaders GRUB legacy does not boot FreeBSD (until now). I was thinking of SYSLINUX, perhaps the most popular bootloader by Linux experts, but the Wiki says it doesn't support booting BSD. Since access to the freebsd-ufs partition by Linux is a PITA and Linux is most important for me, I wont use a FreeBSD bootloader. I need easy access to the bootloader's configuration file. I still continue searching with Google. Any hints are welcome! On a FreeBSD mailing list somebody wrote:
You might want to try a chainloader boot from grub. The following is a chainloader rule that I have used, as well as a normal loader boot. I use the loader boot, but I also tested the chainloader boot. You will need a ufs2_stage1_5 file in your grub directory for a loader boot, and linux grub might not have it available.
title FreeBSD, sda3 (oak) chainloader root (hd1,2) chainloader +1 boot
title FreeBSD, sda3 (oak) /boot/loader root (hd1,2,a) kernel /boot/loader boot
Yes, ufs2_stage1_5 is missing, so when I tested #title FreeBSD #root (hd0,a) #kernel /boot/loader title FreeBSD rootnoverify (hd0,1) chainloader +1 boot there was no error, but nothing happened, without the chainloader an error 17, cannot mount selected partition appeared. I wonder that so many *NIX users nag about Windows, but support to access Windows files and to multi-boot with Windows is that easy. I don't have Windows on my machine. I hope somebody is experienced with multi-boot machines using different *NIX operating systems and will help me. Regards, Ralf