Re: any news on UFS2?

[Robert Millan]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2003 at 03:30:38PM -0700, Chris Reichow wrote:
> While poking around for some UFS2 info, I found this:
> 
> >You'll be surprised what grub can do..
> >
> >place this in grub.conf
> >
> >root (hd0,x,y)
> >chainloader (hd0,x,y)+1

This is chainloading. Any minimaly decent bootloader (including LILO) can
do it. It simply means that you have more than one bootloader in your
harddisk, in separate places (one in MBR and others in their respective
partitions). Then you load GRUB which in turn loads FreeBSD's bootloader.

It is not a good solution because it loses a lot of flexibility. For example,
you can't install FreeBSD manualy (ie, mkfs, untar and run grub), or if your
MBR is corrupted for some reason a GRUB rescue floppy will be unable to
boot your installed system.

It's only the preferred option for messy OSes without a documented boot method
such as Microsoft Windows. This is not the case for FreeBSD of course.

We still want support for UFS2 in GRUB, but if you have no longer motivation
to work on it, I understand it.. If that's the case, I'd appreciate if you
could put your (unfinished) patches in a public place so that someone else
may continue your work.

If you still want to work on UFS2 for GRUB; well, thank you! :)

-- 
Robert Millan

"[..] but the delight and pride of Aule is in the deed of making, and in the
thing made, and neither in possession nor in his own mastery; wherefore he
gives and hoards not, and is free from care, passing ever on to some new work."

 -- J.R.R.T, Ainulindale (Silmarillion)