Re: grub/floppy/ext2 question
On Wed, 1 Jan 2003 00:38, Brian May wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 07:41:36PM +0100, Michael Karcher wrote:
> > ext2 makes no use of the first sector of the floppy, to allow boot
> > loaders to be placed there. FAT has its 'magic numbers' in exactly this
> > sector. So mke2fs(8)ing a FAT medium creates a valid e2fs without
> > removing the magic numbers of the FAT file system. So do it yourself.
>
> So (if this is correct and it probably is), it would appear that grub
> uses the first sector to determine if it is a MS-DOS filesystem or not,
> but Linux must use some other mechanism (because mount worked even
> without the -t option).
If you check if a file system is Ext2 before checking if it is MS-DOS (as
Linux does) then there will be no problems in such a situation.
I think that format.exe will wipe out the Ext2 superblock, so therefore the
only correct thing to do is to check for Ext2 first before even considering
checking for MS-DOS.
I suggest that a bug be filed against grub in this regard.
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