From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with archive (Exim 4.43) id 1MTfX3-0005tf-5L for mharc-grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:23:09 -0400 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1MTfX0-0005sc-UI for grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:23:07 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1MTfWw-0005px-54 for grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:23:06 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=35127 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1MTfWv-0005pk-Sw for grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:23:01 -0400 Received: from mx20.gnu.org ([199.232.41.8]:46068) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1MTfWv-0006l5-Ef for grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:23:01 -0400 Received: from aybabtu.com ([69.60.117.155]) by mx20.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1MTfWu-0006EC-QG for grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:23:01 -0400 Received: from [192.168.10.10] (helo=thorin) by aybabtu.com with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MTeR8-00071j-Vq for grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:12:59 +0200 Received: from rmh by thorin with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MTfWs-0002Jm-Pe for grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:22:58 +0200 Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:22:58 +0200 From: Robert Millan To: The development of GRUB 2 Message-ID: <20090722172258.GD8706@thorin> References: <20090718184255.GG8867@thorin> <20090718192211.GN8867@thorin> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit 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: [PATCH] Fix when installing on pationless but partionable medium 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: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:23:07 -0000 On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 11:28:58PM +0200, Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko wrote: > > I don't understand what you mean here. > Let's take a common example of cdrom. Most of the users and developers > are accustomed to a cdrom holding one filesystem. On macs however cds > are partitioned and not being able to access all the partitions is a > problem for end user. Such situations are probably common. If we ditch > has_partitions altogether the only negative side effect will be that > in some weird configurations unpartitioned media may appear to have > partitions but whole media is still accessible. Additionally it > simplifies and makes kernel smaller I'm not sure they're so weird. But we could still do it. Pavel, what do you think? > >> > I'm not sure there's much we can do about this.  Using heuristics sounds like > >> > it will make the solution worse than the problem.  I don't care much about > >> > Microsoft filesystems, but I'd hate to see GRUB fail on a completely sane > >> > ext3 inside msdos label because it happened to look like FAT in raw disk at > >> > the same time. > >> The approach proposed by Collin avoids such problems since correct > >> pc_partition_map is always detected as such. > > > > I haven't looked at the source code, but what he said is we can determine if > > an MBR is valid by checking the bootable flag, and this is not always so. > I don't see any problem. He said: checking that bootable flags of all > partitions are either set (0x80) or unset (0x0) and not another value Oh, that's different. I think it's fine provided that: - None of the commonly used free partitioning tools uses an illegal value. - We fail gracefully and let the user know why. -- 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."