freebsd4.x to make the launch menu

Many friends may have noticed a new, very nice boot menu in FreeBSD 5.1 release, as shown in the following illustration:

Isn't it beautiful? Scott (Scottl@freebsd.org) wrote a note on how to make this boot menu on FreeBSD5.0, but because Scott didn't consider freebsd4.x, Freebsd4.x's friends couldn't use the beautiful menu.

But don't worry, I made a little change based on Scott's menu to make it work on freebsd4.x, so you can download it here: http://www.cnfug.org/tmp/beastie.4th, let's see how to use the menu.

Download beastie.4th

First download the for freebsd4.x beastie.4th

matthew@bsd:/tmp# wget http://www.cnfug.org/tmp/beastie.4th

Then copy the downloaded beastie.4th back to the/boot directory:

matthew@bsd:/tmp# cp/tmp/beastie.4th/boot/beastie.4th

Prepare the necessary files

Because beastie.4th used screen.4th and frames.4th, we have to copy these two files to the/boot directory:

matthew@bsd:/tmp# cp/usr/share/examples/bootforth/{screen.4th,frames.4th}/boot

Change loader.rc

All the required files are ready to start changing the loader.rc file now, in order to prevent the wrong input to the system can not boot, so we first back up:

matthew@bsd:/tmp# Cp/boot/loader.rc/boot/loader.rc.bak

Then edit the/boot/loader.rc in the file without adding the following content:

include/boot/beastie.4th

Initialize Drop

Beastie-start

Note: The above must be a good word input, otherwise it may cause the system will not start.

Let's take a look at the role of these three lines of text added:

include/boot/beastie.4th It's very easy to understand that loading/boot/beastie.4th

Initialize drop this is the initialization/boot/loader.4th

Beastie-start Display Menu

Now reboot the machine and you can see the beautiful boot menu in your freebsd4.x, is the procedure very simple?!

Description: Because of the support for freebsd4.x, the beastie.4th that I modified does not support the ability to turn on ACPI, so the 2nd item in the boot menu is actually the same as the 1th item. In addition, this boot menu is just a FreeBSD boot menu for selecting the FreeBSD boot, so unlike the normal OS loader it does not start other operating systems.

Finally, attach the boot menu on my machine (FreeBSD 4.5 release):