From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with archive (Exim 4.43) id 1MPJhQ-00055a-3x for mharc-grub-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:15:52 -0400 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1MPJhO-00053b-3U for grub-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:15:50 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1MPJhJ-0004zD-GB for grub-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:15:49 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=49712 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1MPJhJ-0004z0-0i for grub-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:15:45 -0400 Received: from mx20.gnu.org ([199.232.41.8]:37227) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1MPJhI-0003m9-NQ for grub-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:15:44 -0400 Received: from aybabtu.com ([69.60.117.155]) by mx20.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1MPJhI-00042t-6X for grub-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:15:44 -0400 Received: from [192.168.10.10] (helo=thorin) by aybabtu.com with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MPIcd-0001q8-7l for grub-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:06:51 +0200 Received: from rmh by thorin with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MPJhG-0004TV-4P for grub-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:15:42 +0200 Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:15:42 +0200 From: Robert Millan To: The development of GRUB 2 Message-ID: <20090710171542.GC17114@thorin> References: <15498-60872@sneakemail.com> <1247005027.3393.82.camel@mj> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Organization: free as in freedom X-Message-Flag: Worried about Outlook viruses? Switch to Thunderbird! www.mozilla.com/thunderbird X-Debbugs-No-Ack: true User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) X-Detected-Operating-System: by mx20.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 1) X-detected-operating-system: by monty-python.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) Subject: Re: boot.img Fix X-BeenThere: grub-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: The development of GRUB 2 List-Id: The development of GRUB 2 List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:15:50 -0000 On Thu, Jul 09, 2009 at 01:09:20AM +0200, Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko wrote: > Sorry for posting some not very-related ideas in one mail and > top-posting but I want to go to bed ASAP now. FAT install is > important. A friend asked me on RMLL to install GRUB on his > partionless SD card. This card was formatted with Symbian and > contained no "FAT32" string. I actually see no reason to keep the > check for this string. Originally it was added to ignore some recovery > partitions from the list. But there is no reason to do so even if they > normally contain no useful data. It's user's freedom to read even > useless data in GRUB. > Current grub-setup may have a bug to accidently detect FAT* as > pc_partition_map (they share signature) and try to embed with > potentially bad results > For FAT booting I would prefer to have 3 separate sectors able to > parse FAT32/FAT16/FAT12. I would prefer it to be able to go into > subdirectories but in worst case grub-install can copy core.img to the > root. Or we can use so-called "reserved sectors" on FAT to either > store second part of parser or embed core. For the latter the obstacle > is that it's typically only around 32 reserved sectors. I agree GRUB should be very careful not to destroy potentially valuable data. However, that's not to say FAT install is important. Typically our install doesn't collide or interfere with any filesystem, it's only a few corner cases that do, and IMO we should try to discourage those. But of course, destroying someone's filesystem is not the right way to discourage something :-) -- Robert Millan The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."