/boot/loader question

walt wa1ter at myrealbox.com
Tue Nov 30 16:44:27 PST 2004



On Tue, 30 Nov 2004, Simon 'corecode' Schubert wrote:

> On Tuesday, 30. November 2004 22:40, walt wrote:
> > My question:  is there any inherent limitation in /boot/loader
> > which would prevent loading the kernel from a logical partition?

> yes: loader doesn't contain the needed logic to find and use a non-primary
> slice. can you try manually setting the boot device in loader to the right
> device? if that doesn't work, somebody needs to hack loader to support it (or
> not)

Heh, my guess would be "or not" ;o)  When I type "show" at the loader
prompt I see curdev and loaddev, which are both pointed at the correct
logical/extended partition, but I don't see bootdev.  (Picky, picky!)

This is a very old topic in the *BSD newsgroups.  The OpenBSD guys are
openly hostile about the subject of installing to extended partitions
but they refuse to admit their real objections (which are pretty clear,
IMHO).

The facts (as I see them) are these:  no serious developer wants to
admit that his OS (which is superior in every way to any other OS)
does not rate one of the four PRIMARY partitions!  (Delete Windows,
for f*ks sake!)

I sympathize with this attitude, yes.  But I just bought another
hard drive for the sake of installing a FIFTH primary partition,
just to install a SECOND install of DFly!  Yes, I love DFly enough
to buy another hard drive ;o)







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