This has provided me with next to no hope or information.  Anyone else?

Here's what I have:

wd0 has windows on it; the mbr_bootselect code defaults to Hard Disk 2,
where it picks up the MBR code from that when you fail to manually
select windows.

wd1 (Hard Disk 2 -- it would be wd2 if it were hardwired) is fdisk'd as such:

Disk: /dev/rwd1d
NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:
cylinders: 39535 heads: 16 sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)

BIOS disk geometry:
cylinders: 1024 heads: 255 sectors/track: 63 (16065 sectors/cylinder)

Partition table:
0: sysid 169 (NetBSD)
    start 63, size 39851697 (19458 MB), flag 0x80
        beg: cylinder    0, head   1, sector  1
        end: cylinder 1023, head 254, sector 63
1: sysid 169 (NetBSD)
    start 14076720, size 137088 (66 MB), flag 0x0
        beg: cylinder  876, head  60, sector  1
        end: cylinder  884, head 195, sector 63
2: <UNUSED>
3: <UNUSED>

This is, I'm sure, after having looked at it closer, quite wrong.
But I thought I'd give it a try.  Partition 1 is equivalent in size to
wd1i:

[dislabel for wd1]
# /dev/rwd1d:
type: ESDI
disk: ST320420A
label: Seagate 20GB
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 16
sectors/cylinder: 1008
cylinders: 39535
total sectors: 39851760
rpm: 3600
interleave: 1
trackskew: 0
cylinderskew: 0
headswitch: 0           # microseconds
track-to-track seek: 0  # microseconds
drivedata: 0

16 partitions:
#        size    offset     fstype  [fsize bsize cpg/sgs]
 a:    132993        63     4.2BSD   1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.    0*- 131)
 b:   1573488    133056       swap                      # (Cyl.  132 - 1692)
 c:  39851697        63     unused      0     0         # (Cyl.    0*- 39535*)
 d:  39851760         0     unused      0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 39535*)
 e:    451584   1706544     4.2BSD   1024  8192    32   # (Cyl. 1693 - 2140)
 f:    274176   2158128     4.2BSD   1024  8192    32   # (Cyl. 2141 - 2412)
 g:   3225600   2432304     4.2BSD   2048 16384   128   # (Cyl. 2413 - 5612)
 h:   8418816   5657904     4.2BSD   2048 16384   128   # (Cyl. 5613 - 13964)
 i:    137088  14076720     4.2BSD   1024  8192    32   # (Cyl. 13965 - 14100)
 j:    451584  14213808     4.2BSD   1024  8192    32   # (Cyl. 14101 - 14548)
 k:    274176  14665392     4.2BSD   1024  8192    32   # (Cyl. 14549 - 14820)
 l:   6481440  14938560     4.2BSD   2048 16384   128   # (Cyl. 14820 - 21249)
 m:  18431760  21420000     4.2BSD   2048 16384   128   # (Cyl. 21250 - 39535*)

[I have it heavily parted for a reason.]

Anyway:  wd1a is my 1.5 root partition; wd1i is currently my 1.6-current
root partition.

I'd like to be able to menu-select from the mbr_bootselect thing that I
want to boot from wd1i, rather than wd1a.

It turns out when I go into manual mode, the bootloader assumes that the
place from whence it loaded the boot code is hd0.  Thankfully, this does
not get propagated from the second-stage booter to the kernel, or I'd be
in REAL trouble.

So anyway, do we make provisions for this, or do I have to do a partition
juggle (again)?

So I can boot it manually, but i'd like to be able to make it the default
or put it into a boot menu.  Does GRUB handle anything like this?


On Sun, 14 Jul 2002, David Laight wrote:

# Well the netbsd bootloader (the one that counts down from 5)
# could read a command from a file when the timeout expires.
# After all it knows how to access the root directory.
#
# But if you need the mbr_bootsel to do anything you would
# have to modify the boot sector - and trust there is space
# in mbr_bootsel to fit in the code to unset it (by writing
# a copy of itself back).

				--*greywolf;
--
NetBSD. Not Guano.