Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org> writes:
> Hi,
>
> David <bouncingcats@gmail.com> wrote (Sat, 9 Oct 2021 21:56:24 +1100):
>> I see that the suggestion to use 'cat' comes
>> from #604839.
>>
>> Yes, 'cat' will "work", however I feel there is no
>> good reason to use 'cat' there.
>>
>> Because the purpose of 'cat' is for concatenating
>> multiple files, and it also requires a shell redirection
>> from stdout. Both are unnecessary here.
>>
>> I suggest this command should be used:
>> # cp /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin /dev/sdX
>
Wow that's a new capability :-) IIRC cp couldn't historically write
directly to block devices, and DEST had to be either a target file or
directory. It makes me wonder if install(1) has also gained spooky new
capabilities :-p
> The documentation in the syslinux package also has
>
> A simple MBR, roughly on par with the one installed by DOS (but
> unencumbered), is included in the SYSLINUX distribution. To install
> it under Linux, simply type:
>
> cat mbr.bin > /dev/XXX
>
> ... where /dev/XXX is the device you wish to install it on.
>
> so I guess there is some good reason to do it this way.
>
Holger, do you think this could be from the days of
cat bootloader.bin kernel.image userspace.bin > /block/device
?
AFAICT these semantics aren't totally totally anachronistic, because of
systemd-boot's "unified image" or "unified kernel image" support...but
that said, I'm not sure if this is an example of simple
appended/concatenated images.
Best,
Nicholas
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