# Installation into non-primary partition?



## noloader (Sep 10, 2011)

Hi All,

I'm out of primary partitions. I have an extended partition with three partitions available. Unfortunately, FreeBSD will not install into them (confirmed during an install attempt) [1]:

    FreeBSD must be installed into a primary partition.

Are there any work arounds?

Out of curiosity, why is a primary required for FreeBSD and OpenBSD? XP, Vista, Ubuntu, and Fedora will install into a non-primary.

Jeff

[1] http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install-pre.html


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## jb_fvwm2 (Sep 10, 2011)

Install to CF or thumbdrive (/ == root) and to the extended partition (/usr, /var, /tmp , you'll probably run out of space on the latter though; not something I'd recommend.  Post more data about your disk(s)?  (and backups!)


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## wblock@ (Sep 10, 2011)

ISTR this is a limitation of FreeBSD's tiny boot loader.  Use something else to boot, which should be easy if you're already multi-booting.


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