Re: Guidance on conflicts between GNU GRUB and proprietary software

[Colin Watson]

On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 02:10:20AM -0700, Bogdan wrote:
> >  * The BIOS can often only read from relatively near the start of the
> >    disk, and core.img must be readable by the BIOS.  If some other
> >    operating system is already installed - the common dual-boot case,
> >    and the case where this problem is overwhelmingly most likely to
> >    matter - it's likely to occupy a large stretch of partitioned space
> >    right after the boot track.
> 
> Are you talking about the conventional INT 13h interface?

Yes, which is the only thing that will fit into the boot sector which
needs to read everything else.

> >  * The MBR format has so many irritating restrictions on primary
> >    partitions that the more partitions an operating system needs to
> >    create by default, the more stress we put on partitioning
> >    algorithms.  (Most people don't notice any of this until they try to
> >    install on a machine whose OEM helpfully created three or four
> >    primary partitions already.)
> 
> Only one of the 4 primary partitions can be active. So, turn whatever is not 
> needed into an extended partition. What tools with this screw over? Or, are 
> we 
> talking about OSes that don't support extended partitions here?

It rather depends on the pattern of free space that's available;
consider for example the case where there's already a logical partition
but there is another primary partition between it and the space you
actually want to use.  The precise details are off-topic for this list,
though.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       address@hidden