Re: Open BSD kernels & Re: Bug and patch for BSD partition detection

[Heikki Vatiainen]

marco grigull <address@hidden> wrote:

> On a different note, using the kernel command with or without the --type 
> option
>  does not boot my copy of the stock openbsd 2.7 kernel.  The kernel drops 
> into the 
>  debugger, and suggests that /boot is too old (it must think that that is how 
> it
>  was loaded).  Do current netbsd kernels lend themselves to kernel booting?

My experiments have showed that grub can load NetBSD kernel but not
OpenBSD 2.7 or 2.8 kernel. With FreeBSD, grub loads /boot/loader
which then loads the FreeBSD kernel.

At one time, my grub configuration file looked like this. This is 
hand written, so hopefully I remember everything right.

title Solaris8
root (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

title OpenBSD
parttype (hd0,2) 0xa6
root (hd0,2,a)
chainloader +1

title NetBSD
parttype (hd0,2) 0xa9
root (hd0,2,e)
kernel --type=netbsd /netbsd

title FreeBSD
parttype (hd0,2) 0xa5
root (hd0,2,f)
kernel /boot/loader

The problem with grub loading directly the OpenBSD kernel was the 
same as yours. If the chainloader loads the OpenBSD boot sector 
then everything works. However, the OpenBSD boot code does not 
like the kernel residing on any other slice that 'a' so there is a 
reason that OpenBSD takes the 'a' slice.

Another trick is also to change the partition id with the parttype 
command so that OpenBSD boot code and NetBSD kernel see what they 
want to see.

Heikki
-- 
Heikki Vatiainen                  * address@hidden
Tampere University of Technology  * Tampere, Finland