John Summerfied wrote: > Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: > >> John Summerfied wrote: >> >>> Howver, this topic's made me think, maybe we have it wrong. >>> >>> The standard MBR has code that looks for the first active partition and >>> boots that. A while back, I had cause to examine Darwin's source and ut >>> contains code (in Turbo Assembler) to do that. >>> >>> If we (the Linux community) used a compatible MBR, perhaps using the >>> code from Darwin or FreeDOS, and installed it in /dev/hda (or whatever) >>> if there's no existing code there, then we'd get along much better with >>> Windows. >>> >>> GRUB, LILO or WhatEver would go in the /boot partition. >>> >>> If Michael reinstalled Windows, then he could go into wherever it is in >>> Windows he makes some other partition active and reactivate his /boot >>> partition, boot Linux and add a stanza for Windows. >>> >>> >>> Thoughts? >>> >> >> Using Windows fdisk, you can only make a primary partition on the >> first hard drive active. /boot does not need to be a primary >> partition for LILO or Grub to work when the first stage in installed >> in the MBR. For that matter, you do not need to create a /boot >> partition with a lot of installs. > > > If you don't have a separate /boot partition, then the /boot partition > is the root partition. > > Its true that /boot does not have to be a primary partition, but it > almost always can be. > > Even on my laptop that came with a recovery partition, a Windows > primary, an extended and a windows secondary, there was the possibility > to create one more primary partition. > > > >> >> Just to complicate matters, how would you handle the case where >> Windows is on the first hard drive, and Linux is on the second >> drive? By installing the first stage loader in the MBR, this is >> not a problem... I guess you could go into the BIOS and change >> the drive that you boot from to handle this, but I can see problems >> with a new user trying to do that. Besides, not all BIOS will handle >> doing it. > > > With some care:-) > > Booting the second in the BIOS is certainly an option in many cases, > with Grub/lilo having the option to boot the first. > > Some distros can resize NTFS; if we could do that and filch a miniscule > amount for a partition on the first drive, then we're home and hosed. > > There may be come cases where we need to resort to the existing > behaviour, but having problems with few systems beats having problems > with a few:-) > I guess the way I look at it is that you are looking at a lot of work to make the change, and what you gain is a different set of hoops you have to jump through to fix things after you install Windows. I am not sure of the FC process to fix things, but the last time I had to do it on a Mandriva install, the process was: Boot the install CD. Hit F1 for more options. Pick Rescue. Pick "Restore Boot Loader" from the menu. This way, you can still install Linux to a logical partition, install more then one version of Linux to the same system, etc. It gives you a lot more flexibility... Besides, do you really want a new user playing around with fdisk? What happens if they make the wrong partition active? They can end up with a system they can not boot. To make matters more interesting, I ma not sure this will work on all systems. I have worked on systems that will boot with no active partition. Mikkel -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
