Duncan Lithgow wrote:
I'd better mark this thread solved...
That suggests to me that it's probably safest to put grub in hda1 or so, and mark that partition bootable.
That's the default isn't it? Paul said that MBR is in the first part of hda1 - and because I'm also running windows it _has_ to be marked bootable (or somewhere before 1024 has to)
Thanks again for the help
Duncan
Just a clarification. There is a boot block at the beginning of disk (BEFORE the first partition) and a boot block at the beginning of every partition. "MBR" refers to the boot block at the beginning of the disk.
Now, something that I'm less sure of. If you put grub into the MBR (means code in the MBR and the 1.5 stage in the following sectors) then it can boot any partition, marked "bootable" or not.
If you install grub in some other partition (technically the boot block of that partition with stage 1.5 in the following sectors) then the code executed first will be whatever is installed in MBR. If that code is installed by windows, then I believe that it loads the code from the boot block of whichever partition is marked bootable. That would have to be the partition with grub in the boot block if you want to bring up grub.
Now if you want that grub to chain load windows, I think (but am not sure) that you need to change which partition is bootable (using grub commands in grub.conf) to mark the windows partition bootable before you chain to its boot loader.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about grub could confirm or correct this latter comment.
