Re: [RFC] Detect other software using embedding area

[Brendan Trotter]

Hi,

On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 8:28 PM, Colin Watson <address@hidden> wrote:
> When I blogged about this recently (and rather unexpectedly ended up on
> Slashdot), several people followed up to say that GRUB shouldn't be
> using the embedding area because it was never defined to be used for
> anything in particular and has no protocol for arbitrating among
> conflicts like this.

Unfortunately, where the PC BIOS is concerned a lot of things are de
facto standards, rather than actual standards; but I've always held a
far simpler view: The MBR and the remaining sectors in the first track
(before the start of the first partition) are reserved for the sole
use of the "boot manager". If GRUB is the boot manager, then no OS
(and no application running under any OS) has the right to touch these
sectors; and the opposite is also true - e.g. if GRUB is not the MBR
(e.g. GRUB is chain-loaded by something else) then GRUB has no right
to touch any of these sectors.

If applications running on Windows are causing problems (overwriting
something they have no right to touch), then the best solution would
be a public web page (maybe in the GRUB wiki?) that explains the
problem and lists which applications are buggy/broken crap...


Cheers,

Brendan