On Tue, Nov 28, 2006 at 08:49:43PM +0000, Brian Candler wrote:
> I've recently installed OpenBSD 4.0 on two machines in spare space at the
> end of the disk.
>
> It turns out that OpenBSD is unbootable if the root filesystem starts above
> cylinder 1024. However, this isn't a problem for FreeBSD; I guess it makes
> use of newer BIOS calls.
>
> I can still boot OpenBSD on these machines, by using the cd40.iso CDROM or a
> USB pen containing cdrom40.fs, and typing "boot hd0a:/bsd" or "boot
> hd1a:/bsd" at the boot> prompt. However this is a bit ugly.
Yes. All this is documented, though.
> So I was wondering, are the OpenBSD and FreeBSD boot processes similar
> enough that I could use the FreeBSD boot loader (first and/or second stage)
> to boot OpenBSD? And if so, has anyone got a recipe for this that they would
> care to share?
I know that GRUB should be able to do this, although I've never tried
that. I presume any bootloader that can be persuaded to load another and
then hand off execution (chain-loading in GRUB terms) could be used.
Joachim
