Re: Guidance on conflicts between GNU GRUB and proprietary software

[Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko]

On 09/28/2010 09:15 PM, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 09:05:21PM +0200, Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' 
> Serbinenko wrote:
>   
>> Using an embedding partition on msdos as an optional alternative (not as
>> replacement) to MBR gap is a clear possibility, good idea and was
>> proposed before but details are very unclear. Like:
>> - How to create such partition
>> - How does grub find it and ensures that it's an embedding partition?
>> Any false positive will result in data loss. Obviously no msdos type is
>> completely unused by now so it's not a way.
>>     
> There are NO unused ones?  How did GPT get a hold of one then?
> There should be plenty.
>   
GPT has new types.
in msdos there are only 255 possible types. Some are known to be used by
well known software but during 10 years of no central body for this and
everybody willing a type just taking one in self-service I think every
single type is used by either widely known or mostly unknown software.
And destroying someone's hobby OS would be a bad thing.
> Much harder is making room for yet another partition.
>
> Of course when using grub2 on an IBM powerpc, you have no choice about
> where to put grub.  It must be written directly to a PReP boot partition,
> since that's the only thing the firmware will attempt to boot from.
> And it too uses msdos partitions it seems.  Now of course the PReP boot
> partition type could not possibly have any meaning on an x86 system.
> Could borrow that one. :)
>
>   
GRUB has a design principle of being cross-platform installable.
Moreover the same disk can contain multiple grub installation. I
personally regularly move the disk between yeeloong and amd64 laptop,
well it has only one GRUB since on yeeloong my GRUB is in flash but it
could easily have one on disk too.


-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko

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