Re: [PATCH] Improve documentation of BIOS installation

[Colin Watson]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 02:11:45PM +0100, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> On 29/03/11 13:40, Colin Watson wrote:
> > address@hidden BIOS installation
> > address@hidden BIOS installation
> 
> This is a good summary.

Thanks.  I've incorporated some feedback from Vladimir and committed
this.

Vladimir and I disagreed a bit over what the traditional partition table
scheme should be called.  Other parts of the GRUB manual describe it as
"msdos", which is also the identifier used in GNU Parted's UI; and he
pointed out that MBR is also used to refer to sector 0.  I'm
uncomfortable with the lower case there, and I also don't like
attributing the scheme to a single company and (proprietary) operating
system in a GNU manual.

The GNU Parted manual uses "MS-DOS" in a number of places where prose is
more suitable than the identifier, although some of the documentation it
should have has "moved" to the non-existent "GNU Storage Guide".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Boot_Record talks about the "MBR
partition table scheme", although I haven't checked to see whether
that's long-lived terminology on Wikipedia.

The GPT specification uses MBR in both senses: it refers to the "MBR
disk layout", and also to the MBR which may be located at LBA 0.  I like
this terminology because it's company- and OS-neutral, although it does
require careful phrasing in order to be clear.

Does anyone have preferences here?  I left it as "MBR" in my commit for
the time being, although there may well be scope for a rephrasing
through the whole manual.

> > +(called by
> > +various names, such as the "boot track", "MBR gap", or "embedding area", 
> > and
> > +which is usually at least 31 KiB),
> 
> Maybe mention the original name/reason; "DOS compatibility region"

Vladimir's reaction was that a casual reader might think "Huh?  What
does this have to do with compatibility".  Do you have a reference for
this being the original name?

> I'll link to this node from http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/disk/
> when it appears on line.

  http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#BIOS-installation

You might like to link to (or contribute to!)
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Images as well, in the
context of your document.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       address@hidden