Re: Boot sector for ext2

[Colin Watson]

On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 09:31:14AM +0200, Martin Rosenau wrote:
> I wrote a tool I wish to publish under GPL that may be integrated
> into GRUB instead of publishing as separate tool:
> 
> Background: In a multi-OS-environment it is sometimes not possible
> installing GRUB on the MBR (Windows Vista has problems then!)
> Installing GRUB on an ext2 partition (instead of on the MBR) often
> requires "block lists" which often do not work.
> 
> I wrote a boot sector that is capable to search a file on the ext2
> partition by file name (not by inode or block number etc...) and
> load it. Because the entire code is quite small it fits into the
> boot sector and "block lists" are not required.
> 
> This would also allow to use different "core.img" files (e.g. one
> booting Linux and one booting Memtest) when booting GRUB from a
> chain loader (e.g Windows' boot menu).

Hi,

Thanks for your work.  However, doesn't this overlap with what the
"ntldr-img" GRUB extras module (originally based on part of GRUB4DOS)
already does?  Its purpose is to be small enough that it can be booted
from the Windows boot loader, which may only be able to load 16 sectors;
it supports reading a named file from a handful of file systems,
including ext2 and NTFS.  It's commonly shipped along with GRUB; for
example, Debian and Ubuntu ship it.

Admittedly, ntldr-img will not fit into 512 bytes, so if that's what
your code does then it does occupy a slightly different space.

Regards,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       address@hidden