Bug#293867: installation on sparc ultra5 overwrites Master Boot Sectors with silo

[Roland Egger <egger@tarantel.rz.fh-muenchen.de>]

Hi Joey,
thank you for your answer.

On Tue, Feb 08, 2005 at 12:51:19PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote:
> Roland Egger wrote:
> > Package: installation-reports
> > Version: Debian 3.0r2
> > Severity: important
> > 
> > Processor: UltraSPARC-IIi 440 MHz
> > Root Device: IDE
> > 
> > I have installed Debian Linux 3.0r2 on my ultra5
> 
> Installation reports are really intended to be used to report sarge
> installations. The installer used for Debian 3.0 is no longer being
> developed.

Yes I know that. I've written the installation report because
I hope that in the new sarge version or the next stable releases this problem
is or if it's still there will be fixed. I've heard from another
Debian user (Vincent Pelletier) that the new sarge installation has 
the same problem with overwriting the master boot sectors so I write 
in the hope that this will change soon ...

> 
> > Afterwards I booted the Debian cd mounted my
> > linux partition and run silo -r /mnt -t to install silo on the linux
> > partition. Afterwards everything worked fine.
> > I can now boot silo or solaris from the OpenBoot and from silo I can
> > boot linux)
> > It would be great if the new debian has a possibility to let the
> > master boot blocks untouched. There should be one option e.g.
> > 4. save silo installation (Master Boot Sector will not be changed)
> > 
> > Installing silo with the -t option seems to be a save method and does
> > not harm. It's really a nasty thing to remove silo (if something
> > goes wrong like in my example (perhaps too large disks) or you
> > want/have to remove linux/silo) and restore the old boot blocks.
> 
> Since the new installer does not support running silo with -t either to
> not write to the MBR, I'll assign this report to the appropriate part of
> it.
> 
> -- 
> see shy jo

Hmm, so the MBR ist still overwritten like in the old release
and like it is described by Vicent?! It would be really great
if this will be soon fixed.
Thank you again,
   kind regards
     Roland