On Sat, 2007-08-18 at 09:47 -0400, David Krings wrote: > Hi! > > I gave up on getting GRUB to behave consistently in my setup. I squarely > blame GRUB for that as there is no reason not to work properly. > Anyhow, what are the other reliable boot options other than a boot > loader installed in MBR? > > I recall from the early Linux days boot floppies as well as booting from > Windows was an option. Either way sucks, but is better than what I got now. > > Any hints are greatly appreciated. > > David > I am confused... What is the reason that you don't wish to use the means of the MBR? The hardware resets to zero, this forces the drive seek, the first sector is read and action is taken from there. To my knowledge, there are several other ways to perform this bootstrapping, but this is the most flexible. Otherwise the firmware must know in advance the record to look for, and if any means other than a specific track and sector, the firmware would have to know how to read and interpret the disk structure, which would make the firmware useful to only one OS, and more specifically to only one disk format. This would then prevent booting from anything except one disk form, unless the firmware included a large number of formats, such as one for USB Flash, one for CD Roms, one for DVD roms, one for Floppies, one for tape.... well, you get the point... eventually the firmware would need upgrading quite often, every time a new device or format became available. As much as people hate software updates, just think if they had to "flash" the bios more frequently? Regards, Les H
