# Linux dual boot



## rmzelnick (Jul 13, 2014)

Dear FreeBSD community,

I'm fairly new to FreeBSD, and having a Gentoo Linux system already installed I wish to dual boot my system by adding an entry on my already installed GRUB legacy, my /boot partition is of type EXT2 and I wish to share the same partition with this FreeBSD install.

Is this possible? How would I do this?

Regards,
Mark


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## scottro (Jul 13, 2014)

If I understand your question, you wouldn't share the Linux boot partition. 

Generally, (with Fedora or some Debian variant), I create a primary partition, and install FreeBSD into that.  Then, it has (in my experience--I've only done this a few times, generally, I run FreeBSD on its own machine), still booted into Linux and I had to add an entry to grub.conf.  WIth legacy grub, if I remember correctly, it's just

```
title FreeBSD
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
chainloader +1
```

if it were on the second partition.  
(That hd0,2 might have to be hd0,2,a), I've not done it with legacy grub in quite awhile.


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## rmzelnick (Jul 13, 2014)

Dear scottro,

Sorry for the confusing question.. To make myself clear I would like to know if I can share my current /boot (Gentoo Linux) partition with FreeBSD. From what you've said I understood that I can install FreeBSD in one whole partition and add an entry to GRUB.

Also, how can I prevent FreeBSD from installing a MBR thus leaving my system intact? In addition I don't have GPT. Also can I not use a swap partition and use a swapfile instead?

Regards,
Mark


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## scottro (Jul 13, 2014)

No, they can't share a partition as far as I know.
From my limited experience (not using GPT either) when I installed FreeBSD on a machine that already had Linux installed, it didn't touch the boot loader. As I said, I believe (though I can't make a guarantee) it will leave your current bootloader alone.  In my experience, it always has, and upon reboot, it would boot into Linux.  At that point, I would adjust the Linux distribution's grub to boot the FreeBSD install.  

You don't need to create a swap partition.  Just follow the Handbook guidelines.  I've always just created one partition, a large / partition. 

You might want to wait for someone with more experience with this sort of install to answer though, as I have said, I've only done it a few times, and in all cases, it was on a non-essential machine.  In each instance when I've done it, however, it did leave the MBR alone. For what it's worth, the grub in the MBR was either Debian or Fedora, and in all cases using grub2, but I don't think that will be relevant.


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## rmzelnick (Jul 14, 2014)

Dear scottro,

Thanks for your response, I will perform the installation in one slice of my hard drive.


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