Re: Grub cannot fit into boot record
On Sun, 15 Jan 2012 08:24:40 -0500 (EST), Arno Schuring wrote:
> John Hasler (jhasler@newsguy.com on 2012-01-14 12:25 -0600):
>> IMHO putting critical
>> boot software in an "unallocated" area that other software will (not
>> unreasonably) assume contains nothing important is a loony idea.
>
> It's not any more loony than hardcoding the disk sectors in which the
> kernel file resides.
The stage 1 boot loaders of both grub-pc and lilo hard code the
location of the next stage. But for lilo, this is in a file in
the Linux file system (by default it's called /boot/map). For
grub, for a disk in the MS-DOS format, it is usually stored in
unallocated sectors between the master boot record and the first
partition. The key word is "unallocated". Backup programs may
not back them up. Restore programs may not restore them.
And other programs, assuming that the unallocated sectors are
empty, may decide that they want to store stuff there too,
causing a conflict. And if there are no unallocated sectors
between the master boot record and the first partition, grub
cannot be installed (at least not in the preferred way).
In my humble opinion it is best to avoid the use of unallocated
sectors altogether, if possible, for the reasons listed above.
When used with disks in the GPT format, I believe that grub
uses a separate boot partition, rather than unallocated sectors.
But I'm not a grub expert; so I'm not sure about that. lilo
does not support boot disks in the GPT format at this time.
--
.''`. Stephen Powell
: :' :
`. `'`
`-
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