On 06/24/11 10:50, Anand Buddhdev wrote: > Hello list users, > > I have a virtual server for testing, on which I have installed OpenBSD 4.8. > The installation is on wd0a, and there's just a single / partition. > > I then did a second installation, and setup OpenBSD 4.9 on wd0d, also with a > single / partition.
bad. [OP wants to boot from wd0d] > Is this a bug, or have I missed something? it's an unsupported configuration -- OpenBSD boots from the 'a' partition. Anything else...you are pretty much on your own, and your results will probably not be portable across platforms. Things may break. You say this is a virtual server...why are you trying to multiboot a virtual server? Build a new VM! Or maybe bolt a new disk onto an old VM, if you want easy access to the old files. More general answer, though: just don't do this. Jumping to an annoyingly i386/amd64-centric focus, though -- think of an fdisk partition as a way of identifying operating systems, and your disklabel as ways of identifying filesystems within the OpenBSD operating system. You are trying to use disklabel for an fdisk-like task. Most non-i386/amd64 systems really aren't really designed for multiple OSs on one disk. I can't think of any good reason to have different versions on the same machine, 'specially a past version. Some people want to pretend to develop (on -current) and use -release/-stable for production, but if you are developing, eat your own dog food, and USE -current, you aren't doing anyone any favor by busting -current and using something else. The closest justification I can find is on an amd64 system, to test both amd64 and i386 code. If you really want to have multiple versions of OpenBSD on one physical i386/amd64 machine, use some kind of boot manager program which "hides" inactive partitions. You can do this manually using bsd.rd and fdisk, changing the desired partition to type 'a6' and flagged active, and the unwanted partition as some other type and NOT flagged active. However, I've tried this, I know exactly what needs to be done, and I've made a lot of mistakes trying to do what I know needed to be done. Mistakes result in unbootable disks to corrupt file systems (big lesson: boot from bsd.rd, don't try to use fdisk to change the ID of a running system. That's the corrupted FS). Nick.
