Re: [RFC] Allow separate boot block and core.img location?

[Chris Murphy]

> From: Andrey Borzenkov
> Sent: 12/16/13 02:36 PM
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: [RFC] Allow separate boot block and core.img location?
>  
> There are many users using dual boot with Windows and Linux. In this 
> configuration installing grub in MBR unfortunately breaks at least some 
> updates of Windows 8 (update fails). And installing grub in partition 
> has all sort of known problems with blocklists. 

Is there a good reason why we don't have a separate partition for core.img? It 
doesn't seem like it's an OK idea for anything to be using the unallocated MBR 
gap, it's essentially a free for all. So why not an 0xEA partition of 1MB 
that's the MBR equivalent of the GPT BIOS Boot partition? I don't know if it 
even necessarily requires use of a primary partition if the boot.img code in 
the MBR simply points to an LBA to load. If that's the case core.img could be 
in an extended partition. And once GRUB is running, it doesn't care about 
primary or extended partitions anyway, right?


Chris Murphy