Issues encountered while trying to dual-boot Linux and FreeBSD

[evilducky]

I have Fedora 16 on /dev/sda1 and installed FreeBSD 8.2 on /dev/sda2, with a BSD swap partition on /dev/sda3. I chose not to install the FreeBSD boot manager, thinking I can just run 'update-grub2' on Fedora 16 and Grub (on MBR) will recognize BSD. Well, I was wrong.

In the past, I've tried installing the FreeBSD boot manager to the MBR, because the installer prompt said that if I have other operating systems on my hard drive then I should choose to install the interactive boot manager. I had done so, and when the interactive FreeBSD boot manager loaded, it listed my Linux partition but failed to boot into it. I was, however, able to boot FreeBSD with no problem.

I have done Google searches on this issue, and read the BSD documentation for dual-booting, but couldn't find anything that solves the problem. However, I think this is a pretty common issue, so hopefully someone here will have some kind of advice or direct solution.

[nixblog]

Have you seen this,

DUAL BOOTING LINUX & FreeBSD - How to restore grub if Bootmgr wipes it out - The FreeBSD Forums

[SL6-A1000]

I would recommend you read the following guide on GRUB2 and edit GRUB manually. It will save time and you will probs feel accomplished

GRUB 2 bootloader - Full tutorial

It is very useful and gives alot of information, i often refer to it for both GRUB2 and legacy GRUB if i forget something. If your game edit the custom menu entry script file for GRUB2 (i've provided the location of the file and an example below), instead of trying to reload/ recover GRUB (which has nothing wrong with it) and potentially having an unbootable system if something goes wrong.

However, i also highly recommend you don't edit anything other than the custom file unless your sure you know what your doing.

The custom script file for GRUB is located in:

/etc/grub.d

Once you've added FreeBSD, it should at the end look similar to this:

menuentry "Debian GNU/kFreeBSD" {
insmod ufs2
set root=(hd2,2)
kfreebsd /boot/kfreebsd-8.1-1-amd64.gz
set kFreeBSD.vfs.root.mountfrom=ufs:/dev/ad8s2
set kFreeBSD.vfs.root.mountfrom.options=rw
}

But obviously not the same, as yours is just FreeBSD and not Debian GNU/kFreeBSD

*Remember though to update grub afterwards*