# Dual boot XP and BSD



## Caliante (May 4, 2009)

Hi :e

I've read the other three threads that deal with XP and FreeBSD in dual boot, but I am still not quite sure about the information. I have gone through the manual but that also doesn't tell me in enough 'noob'-terms what I am looking for. I've seen a manual somewhere on the web about resizing my disk to make room for BSD, but this is not necessary for me: I have XP PRO installed on disk 1 which includes several partitions for data. I want to install BSD on disk 2 dedicated, and I would like to have dual boot (since I don't have any serious experience with BSD so I will need XP for my day to day work).

So my question is: will the BSD installer in the above setup allow me to have a dual boot after the installation by default, or are there some ultra scary things I need to do that will scare the daylight out of my eyes r)? I mean, in the afore mentioned threads there is talk about 'messing around' with bootloaders and such, and from reading that I am starting to sweat  So I have the DVD here but I just don't dare to put it into the DVD-writer 

I apologize if this question appears to be to stupid, but I really have no clue.

Thank you in advance for your answers :e


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## tangram (May 4, 2009)

Point to FreeBSD's FAQs and have a look at entries 3.6 and 3.7.


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## SirDice (May 4, 2009)

Caliante said:
			
		

> So my question is: will the BSD installer in the above setup allow me to have a dual boot after the installation by default,


Yes, just pick the bootmanager option when asked.


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## Caliante (May 4, 2009)

tangram said:
			
		

> Point to FreeBSD's FAQs and have a look at entries 3.6 and 3.7.





			
				SirDice said:
			
		

> Yes, just pick the bootmanager option when asked.



Thank you both for your kind reply. I think I need to stress that I have two disks: does the bootmanager/install procedure recognize this as well? Because that was my confusion more or less: the most stories all talk about co-installing dual operating systems on 1 disk. So, in this case you are saying BSD will install on disk2 fine and it will install the boot manager on disk 1?


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## SirDice (May 4, 2009)

Yes, I have a similar setup (even more disks  )


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## Caliante (May 4, 2009)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Yes, I have a similar setup (even more disks  )



Thank you then, I will wipe the sweat of my head, create a backup of my data, make sure I have a hotline to the doctor and insert the DVD :e



Let's see if I can get this to work :r


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## Caliante (May 5, 2009)

Well that worked and didn't work 

1. I installed 7.2 Release. On reboot, I had no boot manager. Hum.
2. Thanks to the book 'FreeBSD 6 Unleashed' I bought some time ago I managed to fix that (sysinstall - Fdisk - disk 1, W - install boot manager).
3. On reboot I have a boot manager albeit a bit strange: I have F1 Win, F2 ?, and F3 BSD. When I select F3 I get another boot menu with an F1 and an F2, and then F2 boots to BSD.
4. Next: install X. That didn't work out. I did Xorg -configure, it tells me it has written /root/xorg.conf.new, however no matter how I try to look in /root, /root isn't there. Not even with cd \ all the way to nowhere x(
5. When I try to do Xorg -config xorg.conf.new my screen turns blank. From the /var/log/xorg.0.log it seems this one is complaining about the missing xorg.conf.new also. I have to find a way to get this log into Windows XP so I could post it here; maybe somebody is willing to help me out on the 'mysterious story of the missing xorg.conf.new? I'm gonna see if I can find some utility that can read UFS from XP.
6. When I rebooted into XP for some strange reason BSD had done 'something' to my first disk as all the XP partitions were reordered.

Two more points:
7. The first time BSD booted I got these messages, both twice and the computer waited for quite some time(the host name is wordperfect, trying to be funny here :e):
A. wordperfect sm-mta [835]: my unqualified host name (wordperfect) unknown: sleeping for retry.
B. wordperfect sm-mta [835]: unable to qualify my own domain name (wordperfect): using short name.
8. *My hardware should work, shouldn't it?* I have Nvidia 9600GT and a Iiyama HDMI monitor; the HDMI wouldn't give problems for BSD, would it?

Thank you (again) for any comments


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## SirDice (May 5, 2009)

Caliante said:
			
		

> 3. On reboot I have a boot manager albeit a bit strange: I have F1 Win, F2 ?, and F3 BSD. When I select F3 I get another boot menu with an F1 and an F2, and then F2 boots to BSD.


Hmm.. It looks like it installed the bootmanager on your second hd. You can try setting the BIOS to boot from the second disk.



> 4. Next: install X. That didn't work out. I did Xorg -configure, it tells me it has written /root/xorg.conf.new, however no matter how I try to look in /root, /root isn't there. Not even with cd \ all the way to nowhere x(


Depending on the Xorg version xorg.conf is probably not needed anymore. Just try to start with *startx* and see how far you're getting.

You may need to add to /etc/rc.conf:

```
hald_enable="YES"
```
And start hald: */usr/local/etc/rc.d/hald start*. Xorg 7.4 depends quite heavily on hal.



> 6. When I rebooted into XP for some strange reason BSD had done 'something' to my first disk as all the XP partitions were reordered.


Go to the disk manager in XP, you can "fix" the drive letters there.



> 7. The first time BSD booted I got these messages, both twice and the computer waited for quite some time(the host name is wordperfect, trying to be funny here :e):
> A. wordperfect sm-mta [835]: my unqualified host name (wordperfect) unknown: sleeping for retry.
> B. wordperfect sm-mta [835]: unable to qualify my own domain name (wordperfect): using short name.


Set a proper, fully qualified hostname in /etc/rc.conf:

```
hostname="mymachine.my.domain"
```
It doesn't matter if the domain actually exists or not.




> 8. *My hardware should work, shouldn't it?* I have Nvidia 9600GT and a Iiyama HDMI monitor; the HDMI wouldn't give problems for BSD, would it?


That should probably work with the nv driver but you may need to install x11/nvidia-driver


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## Caliante (May 6, 2009)

This thread is [solved] but I can not seem to alter this myself in the prefix of the subject title?

I am continuing my exploration of the wonderful world of FreeBSD with a new problem, here:

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?p=22630#post22630

:e


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## tangram (May 6, 2009)

I think you can only edit posts after the 10 posts mark


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## DutchDaemon (May 6, 2009)

10 posts && 10 days of membership.


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