Re: [NanoBSD] Can't use boot0cfg for changing the booting slice

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 05:58:51PM +0200, Paul Schenkeveld wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 02:49:51PM +0200, Nick Hibma wrote:
> > > > :  > But, after the reboot my system still reboot from the slice 1 (but
> > > > :  > the boot loader show correctly that the default choice is now the
> > > > :  > 2)! Where is my problem ?
> > > > :
> > > > : Are you sure you're booting from slice 1?
> > > > : Is fstab on slice 2 pointing to slice 1?
> > > >
> > > > Also, boot0cfg won't mark the slice as ACTIVE, just remember that was
> > > > the last slice you booted from...  To mark it active, you must use
> > > > fdisk.  If by 'active' you mean 'what mount reports root as' then I
> > > > think John's suggestion is right on the money...
> > 
> > Perhaps you could change the line in the update script from
> > 
> > 	boot0cfg -s $oslice $NANO_DRIVE
> > 
> > to
> > 
> > 	boot0cfg -s $oslice $NANO_DRIVE
> > 	echo "a $oslice" | fdisk -f /dev/stdin $NANO_DRIVE
> 
> boot0cfg -s $oslice $NANO_DRIVE
> fdisk -f - << !
> a $NANO_DRIVE
> !
> 
> is even cheaper 8->
> 
> > That's taken from our own version of the update script, but should fit in 
> > the NanoBSD update script.
> 
> I know how to solve the problem on NanoBSD machines I administer, the
> bigger picture is that the bootloader (boot0) changed from looking at
> its own default answer as tuned by boot0cfg -s to looking at the
> active flags in the MBR record.  IMHO this is a regression and a POLA
> violation.  The default action can no longer be "F5 boot from next drive"
> which is valid and useful on multi-drive servers/desktops.
> 
> So far nobody has come up with a good reason why this was changed and
> the change cripples the functionality of boot0cfg, makes NanoBSD no
> longer work as advertised and will scare off new users (of NanoBSD) to
> some kind of embedded whatever OS besides FreeBSD.
> 
> So who wins?
> 
A lot of new functionality was brought in.
I would suggest going through the history at
http://svn.freebsd.org/viewvc/base/head/sys/boot/i386/boot0/boot0.S?view=log
and examine which compile-time options are now there.
Also you can also try contacting luigi who has touched boot0.S

My 0.02$,
Alexey.