Making a bootable multi-OS DVD with bootmanager

[Oliver Fromme]

Devon H. O'Dell <dodell at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
 > Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
 > > On Mon, Nov 15, 2004 at 09:44:23AM +0000, Oliver Fromme wrote:
 > > > It appears that I cannot put FreeBSD 5 and DragonFly on the
 > > > same DVD (or CD) and make them both bootable.  The problem
 > > > is that both use a similar -- but not identical -- infra-
 > > > structure below the /boot directory.  It doesn't seem to be
 > > > possible to use the same /boot/loader for both operating
 > > > systems, and it doesn't seem to be (easily) possible to
 > > > completely separate the boot process of either system into
 > > > a directory other than /boot.
 > > 
 > > 
 > > The FreeBSD 5 boot loader should be able to load the DragonFly
 > > kernel. You just have to tell him where it is. You might run
 > > in some smaller problems with the default search pathes though,
 > > esp. for acpi.ko

Thanks for the suggestion, Joerg.  I think I'll give that
a try and see if I can work around the "smaller problems".

Is there a way to let the DragonFly install CD perform a
chroot() very early in the game, possibly even before the
kernel spawns the init process?  That would be extremely
helpful, because I could put all of the DragonFly related
files into a subdirectory on the DVD and let it chroot()
into that directory, without colliding with anything else
on the DVD.

If this was easily possible, it might also be an incentive
to put DragonFly on other DVDs as a "bonus add-on", which
might improve DF's distribution.  ;-)

 > One suggestion -- use GRUB or any of the other bootloaders that will 
 > load both.

I also considered using GRUB, but unfortunately it won't
help, because GRUB will just load /boot/loader (similarly
to /boot/cdboot), so the whole /boot infrastructure is
still required.

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme, Konrad-Celtis-Str. 72, 81369 Munich, Germany

``All that we see or seem is just a dream within a dream.''
(E. A. Poe)