[newbie] booting on wrong partition

[enoch82]

Hi guys.
It seems that the default location for the bootloader is hd0a . That is the a: partition. But, I have put a: as swap. So, it fails to boot by itself and i then have to type 'boot hd0b:/bsd' . My questions are:
1. Why is there no boot.conf in /etc?
2. Where is the bootloader config?
3. Thus, how can I modify the booting information?

Thanks!

[ocicat]

Originally Posted by enoch82

But, I have put a: as swap.

Why do you feel that you need to modify the default configuration?

Why is there no boot.conf in /etc?

If the default configuration is being used, there is no need for a /etc/boot.conf file. Only if customization is needed is a file required.

[enoch82]

Thanks for the answer.
I just upgraded to 5.2 and the generated boot.conf seems to now contain what I need!

[ocicat]

Follow-up.

Note that the use of the word "partition" needs clarification. OpenBSD partitions all (including swap...) reside within a single primary MBR partition (by convention, Intel & Microsoft defined only four..). How this single OpenBSD partition is sliced to form "a", "b" (which by design is the swap partition...), etc. can be controlled by disklabel(8).

Historically, there are three lettered partitions within the OpenBSD partition which by convention should not be modified without a complete understanding of the underlying implications:

• "a" denotes the boot partition which contains the kernel. DIsks which are not booted from might not have a "a" partition.
• "b" denotes the swap partition. Not all disks need to define swap space. However for insurance reasons, a system needs to have some swap space somewhere defined especially to deal with situations where the system crashes or needs to swap to disk.
• "c" denotes the entire disk. In most cases, there is no need to modify how this partition is defined.

More pertinent information can be found in Section 4 & Section 14 of the official FAQ.

[ocicat]

Originally Posted by enoch82

I just upgraded to 5.2...

Note that OpenBSD 5.3 was officially released today, 1 May 2013.