# Need entry to boot FreeBSD from grub



## dav (Mar 31, 2010)

Hi,

I know this has been covered a million different ways, but the answer I need still eludes me.

All I think I need is an entry to my menu.lst->grub.conf to choose FreedBSD instead of Fedora or BackTrack. I don't have Windows. 

I found this:


```
title FreeBSD
    root (hd0,2,a)
    kernel /boot/loader
```


Is that all there is to it? What is 3rd field, the little "a" for? Where is that? I know thats the 3rd partition on the the 1st drive, but "a"?

I don't have a problem w/ sitting here and installing BSD 10 times to get it just right. I do have a problem with "strange" installations touching my bootloader, mbr, etc. I like having at least one OS I can boot from the drive and connect with.

Basically, I'd like to just configue my partions out of free space, put /, /boot, and /home on separate partitions and point grub to /boot.

It seems simple in my head but I'm hearing a lot of advice here that seems odd. It must be because you all know somethign about this I don't. Also, I haven't had to worry about an IRQ in about 20 years. This sounds like setiing up Sys V back in the early days. No plug in play hacks I guess?

Anyway, if any other linux folks here that know how to point our boot menus to freebsd please let me know. I can figure the rest out (hopefully) as long as I don't hose my other OS's. I can figure out the smart way to do things tomorrow of the next day (like on the 10th install) 

Thanks


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## phoenix (Mar 31, 2010)

hd0 == first harddrive listed by BIOS
2 == third fdisk partition (aka FreeBSD slice)
1 == first FreeBSD partition inside of that slice


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## dav (Mar 31, 2010)

Ahhh - thanks - makes perfect sense now that I've run your fdisk utility. I had to create slices then partition those. I decided to run the install anyway to see what happened and it quit with the error "no /dev/X" device found (or something to that effect). I don't know where to begin. Perhaps when I can dedicate a box to FreeBSD I'll be able to just accept defaults to get started, then smarten it up from there after i've got my feet wet.  I really wanted this for sentimental reasons, I cut my teeth on Kochan & Wood.  But that's been a long time . . .You can close this if ya want.


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