Multiboot a NetBSD kernel with Grub2: it works

[Emmanuel Kasper <emmanuel%libera.cc@localhost>]

I tried booting the NetBSD kernel with grub2, and it works (tm)

#To add IN /etc/grub.d/40_custom
#Boot netbsd from First DOS partition

menuentry "NetBSD on sda1" {
insmod ufs2
set root=(hd0,msdos1)
multiboot /netbsd
}

Remarks:
* boot parameters like -s are ignored
* booting from ufs2/FFSv2 is supported
* grub2 does not need to know about labels, it needs the MS DOS
NetBSD partition and seems to be fine with that.
* grub2 also has a knetbsd option to boot a NetBSD kernel, which loads
the kernel fine, but might pass wrong argument, as the
kernel does not find the rootfs and /sbin/init.
* grub2 documentation does not know that NetBSD is multiboot compliant [1]


Use case:
For me the use case to  have a multiboot compliant kernel was to load a
NetBSD FLOPPY_INSTALL from a Linux partition without any install media.

I used this to install NetBSD on a rented KVM where I had access to the
console, but did not have the possibility to choose my own install media.

Manu

[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Chain_002dloading