Bug#63198: boot-floppies: Don't put the lilo boot record in the extended partition

[Taketoshi Sano <kgh12351@nifty.ne.jp>]

Hi.

  at 28 Apr 2000 09:22:04 -0400,
 Adam Di Carlo <adam@onshore.com> writes:

> > lilo in the MBR is able to start boot from about everywhere.
> 
> I know you've done this -- but are you sure it works on every machine?

I have once read the first.S and second.S in the sorce code of lilo v19-v20.
They does not check the partition at all. What they do is just to load
the sectors which are specified by old C/H/S address using int13.
lilo v21 uses edd feature (enhanced int13 in newer bioses) when ordered,
but it may still not check the partitions at all.

So I think lilo in MBR (the first sector of the disk) can boot up linux
from anywhere where it can load sectors.

I personally use extipl (another boot manager/selector for MBR) and
it can boot up linux from logical partition (/dev/hda5) on TOSHIBA 
portege 660CDT and IBM ThinkPad 235 when I tested it on them.

-- 
  Taketoshi Sano: <sano@debian.org>,<sano@debian.or.jp>,<kgh12351@nifty.ne.jp>