[d0od]

Hey all, just wondering how you go about dualbooting BSD and Vista?

Vista's already installed.

If BSD ran in virtualbox i'd be happy, but it doesn't without a lot of poking.

I guess it'd mainly be a grub replacing windows bootloader issue? How do you sort all that out etc

I'm keen to promote OpenSolaris from Virtualbox so i can properly get a feel for it, how would this affect any dualboot scenario?

[Hybr!d]

Doesn't grub get installed when you do the BSD install.

When I put Linux on my machine it put grub on at the end of the install and setup the boot menu almost automatically.

[Mike0001]

There are various places where the boot code can be placed. One is in the master boot record but there are other places, eg, at the start of the root partition. The latter is recommended as it enables you to keep the Vista boot menu.

I would advise you to get the grub4dos package for windows, copy grldr to the root of c: drive, and add the following to the end of your boot menu:

c:\grldr="Grub"

This extra option gives you a grub boot menu which you can use to (a) add a term to return to the Vista boot menu and (b) one to boot bsd. (You will need to create a menu.lst file in the root of c:.

It is also a good insurance against some service pack setup overwriting your boot sector with the Vista boot loader and rendering unix inaccessible. On top of that, you can add options to boot from various usb devices.