Alternative booting

[Karl Larsen]

David Krings wrote:
> Les wrote:
>> 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?
>
> It is not that I am hellbent on not using the MBR, quite the opposite, 
> it is my desired way of booting for the bazillion reason you listed. 
> It is just that GRUB is extremely flakey when installed on the MBR on 
> my RAID array. I wouldn't have even posted twice about this problem if 
> GRUB would a) work and b) just do its job. But it doesn't and that one 
> hardware that really isn't exotic by any means.
>
> I got a full F7 install on the second primary partition on the SATA 
> RAID1 array. I want to boot this one. GRUB doesn't do it, so I need to 
> find something else or ditch Linux entirely and hope that some clever 
> developers puts a fix into GRUB or any other boot loader.
>
> What BIOS really should do is allow for a device driver and boot 
> loader to be added including some basic UI to make changes to it. In 
> that case, it doesn't matter which drive or format is used and it may 
> even make the  MBR and file tables to be in a smart spot (the middle 
> of the drive) than on the most volatile place of a disc. Geez, even 
> the Commodore 1541 did a better job at that.
> Yes, one would need to adjust it for any hardware or partition 
> changes, but at least one could get to it. Not as it is right now. The 
> MBR approach is ingherently flawed, but for many good and bad reasons 
> we are stuck with it.
>
> OK, before we drift off into fundamental discussions and have even 
> more people hijack this thread, is there anyone out there who can give 
> an answer to my question and not tell me which issues they have and 
> that I am a lunatic for not using MBR? Thanks.
>
    Hi David, your not lunatic or anything. I just proved that Grub in 
F7 is buggy. I did this by doing what I had been trying all morning on 
F7 in one sinple thing on FC6. It works fine now :-)

    If you have an old FC6 on your computer try it there. It will work.



-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.