Re: Another multibooting option for the FAQ

John Danks wrote:
> I just realized this one recently. Most modern BIOS allow you to press
> a key on the POST screen and choose a boot device, even a specific
> hard drive.

I question your use of "most"...
a lot (maybe most) "build from component" systems, yes.
Name brand hardware?  not sure at all about that.

> All of the current multiboot options in the FAQ describe methods for
> use with a single disk. An alternative then is to install Windows on
> the first disk which the BIOS boots to by default, and then install
> OpenBSD on a separate disk in the same machine. Simply press F10, F12
> or whatever key your BIOS uses and choose the OpenBSD disk as your
> boot device.
> 
> This method saves you the trouble of messing around with partitions,
> bootloaders and potential data loss, assuming you have an additional
> drive, room in the case to install it and a BIOS that supports the
> option to choose an alternate boot device.

...and that's three big "if"s, enough to make it a special case, and
if it applies to a user, I think it is pretty intuitive.

If you look at your computer and find an option to boot from an
alternate disk on demand, I'm kinda hoping that the idea "I could
mount a second disk in here and install a second OS on it", would be
high on your list of thoughts.  I'm looking for somewhat more general
case options here.

I also really don't want to encourage multibooting.  People should
really look at it as an advanced trick, but unfortunately the people
most interested in multibooting are usually novice users wanting to
"dabble" in OpenBSD.  Those are the LAST people who should be
multibooting until they understand all the issues.  I warn about this
in the first paragraph, but obviously people skip over that. :-/  The
biggest legitimate use for multibooting in my mind (yeah, that's the
qualifier that counts) is laptops, which generally only have one disk,
and often have significant use for more than one OS.

That being said, I may add a sentence or less pointing people in that
direction next time I rework it.

Nick.