BootMan - Zeta's Own Boot Manager

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BootMan - Zeta's Own Boot Manager

BootMan is Zeta's own boot manager. You will meet BootMan during the installation of Zeta, and later when you want to change your boot settings.

At the end of the installation of Zeta you will be asked by the Installer whether you want to install the Zeta boot manager. If your system is already set up for dual/multiple boot capabilities (for instance GRUB or LILO), you will not need to install BootMan. In fact, it can remove the possibilities for you to boot in to your Linux distribution.

Choosing a Boot Volume
If you have installed BootMan, a Partition Manager Menu will appear when you boot your computer. This menu is a list over bootable volumes installed on your computer, with a pointer on your chosen default boot volume.

By using the arrow keys on the keyboard, you can choose what volume to boot from.

If you don't attend to the Partition Manager Menu with in a predefined time (as set when you installed the boot loader), the computer will automatically boot the default boot volume.

Changing the Default Boot Volume in BootMan
To change the default boot volume, you will have to boot in to Zeta and choose BootMan from the Preference menu, or launch the application from the Terminal by typing "bootman".

Click though the dialog boxes in BootMan to you get to the default boot volume panel. Choose the volume that you want to have as your new default boot volume. Next time you boot, you'll boot into this new default volume.

If you have chosen to use another boot manager, you should refer to the instructions it provides.

Installing the BootManager from Zeta and changing the boot menu
The BootMan application is built up as a set of dialog boxes that you click your self through. The first dialog box ask you wether you want to install or uninstall a Boot Menu, choose to Install Boot Menu:

The second dialog box is telling you that the configuration that you are about to make will be saved in the Master Boot Record (MBR) on the boot device, and that a copy of the old boot configuration file placed in the MDR will be saved to the following directory: /boot/home/config/settings/bootman. It is possible to save it to a different place, but we recommend that you keep the default location.

The copy of the old boot configuration in the MDR will be copied back if you later for one reason or an other would like to uninstall Zeta's boot manager. The third dialog box will tell you that the system managed to make a backup of the old configuration file and that it was called MBR. As an extra safety, Bootman lets those of you who still have a floppy drive on you computers, to make a rescue disk. The rescue disk can be used to restore the MBR if something goes wrong with the installation. If you computer contains other operating systems (dual-boot), we recommend that you make such a rescue disk.

The next dialog box is also important as it's where you choose what partitions that should be part of the boot menu. BootMan detects all the partions on your system, but often you have partions that are not bootable. You should only add the partitions that are bootable to this menu. BootMan lets you edit the name of the entries they will have in the Boot Menu. The boot manager also shows you what file system the partions have. From the screenshot you can see that there are three different file systems: ntfs, bfs and ext2.

The fifth dialog box lets you set the default partition that the boot manager should boot unless you choose another one. You can also set the time that the boot manager should wait for you to make your decission, and if you have problems choosing what operating system to boot, you can even set it to Wait Indefinitely.

The six dialog box is only showing you what partions you chose to include in the Boot Menu. As you can see from the screenshot, there has been included partions that are not bootable. The right thing here would to choose Previous window twice, and reconfigure the partitions you will have in the Boot Menu.

You will now be promted with the warning that is the last chance for aborting the setup of a new MBR, as you are now about to write your new configurations in the MBR file. Click Yes if you would like to write the new configurations to the MBR file, other wise click No to abort the procedure.

You have now made a new MBR file. Reboot you computer to test the new MBR configuration.

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