On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 11:05:26AM -0400, Donald Allen wrote: > On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Jason Dixon <ja...@dixongroup.net> wrote: > > On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 09:10:58AM -0400, Donald Allen wrote: > >> > >> So, I'd like to ask why grub is apparently unsupported on the amd64 > >> architecture? And I would suggest that grub provides a simple solution > >> to dual-booting OpenBSD on a system that had been previously > >> dual-booted with Windows and something else and where the Windows > >> version of the mbr is no longer present. I'd be happy to provide the > >> documentation for the procedure to add to the install guide, if the > >> developers are interested. > > > > Save yourself some headaches. ?Use GAG. > > > > http://gag.sourceforge.net/ > > I looked over the documentation. Yes, for dual-booting OpenBSD with > Windows, this looks fine, very nice. And I'll concede that it's a bit > easier to configure than grub (it guides you through the > configuration, rather than your having to make up a menu.lst), but > when there's a grub package available, as there is with i386 OpenBSD, > the difference isn't great, especially for someone like me with years > of experience with grub, or if good documentation is available > explaining how to do it. > > Though it isn't important in the Windows/OpenBSD case, it appears that > GAG is less general than grub, in the sense that it is assuming > there's a loader in the partition boot record of every partition you > want to boot and appears to always use the grub chainloader technique. > This is not a problem for OpenBSD, which installs its bootloader in > its partition boot record when you tell it during installation that > you aren't going to use the whole disk. But it is a problem if you > want to, say, triple-boot Windows, OpenBSD, and Linux. Linux will > require installing grub in its partition boot record, as the GAG > author notes in his document. In that situation, it would make more > sense, I think, to skip GAG and let the Linux installer install grub > in the mbr for booting all three. In that setup, Linux would be booted > by grub directly, not via a secondary loader.
I've used GAG to multi-boot OpenBSD, Linux, Solaris and Windows. Yes, I use it as a first stage bootloader. So what? It works great and you don't see me whining about grub support in OpenBSD. -- Jason Dixon DixonGroup Consulting http://www.dixongroup.net/
