From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from list by lists.gnu.org with archive (Exim 4.71) id 1QisCy-0000Vl-NU for mharc-grub-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:06:20 -0400 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:46804) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QisCv-0000Uw-VB for grub-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:06:19 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QisCu-0001ql-Bx for grub-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:06:17 -0400 Received: from mailout-de.gmx.net ([213.165.64.23]:60638) by eggs.gnu.org with smtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QisCt-0001pR-4P for grub-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:06:16 -0400 Received: (qmail invoked by alias); 18 Jul 2011 18:06:06 -0000 Received: from p54954014.dip.t-dialin.net (EHLO [192.168.1.20]) [84.149.64.20] by mail.gmx.net (mp015) with SMTP; 18 Jul 2011 20:06:06 +0200 X-Authenticated: #1002206 X-Provags-ID: V01U2FsdGVkX19TwiJlxedTUoFmPvW/zfOxO4yIV2NJuEm8ckplsG MoVX85JyQyU51I Message-ID: <4E24760D.9060400@gmx.de> Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 20:06:05 +0200 From: Axel Kellermann User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110617 Thunderbird/3.1.11 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: grub-devel@gnu.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] Skip partitions during OS probing References: <4E18CB86.8040806@gmx.de> <4E1B1333.6050505@cfl.rr.com> <4E1B1D09.9030703@gmx.de> <4E1B5B56.50609@cfl.rr.com> In-Reply-To: <4E1B5B56.50609@cfl.rr.com> X-Enigmail-Version: 1.1.2 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Y-GMX-Trusted: 0 X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 213.165.64.23 Cc: Phillip Susi X-BeenThere: grub-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list Reply-To: The development of GNU GRUB List-Id: The development of GNU GRUB List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:06:19 -0000 On 07/11/2011 10:21 PM, Phillip Susi wrote: > Fixing the underlying problem of detecting and ignoring the Win7 system > partition would render the patch moot. If it does really still cover a > use-case to be able to manually specify partitions to ignore, it needs > to be done with UUIDs or something else more stable. Just to tie up that loose end, I had a look at the way update-grub determines the presence of a bootable Win7 partition. Turns out it utilizes the os-prober package, which basically uses a four step process to check for a Win7 system: 1. check for presence of file /bootmgr 2. check for presence of directory /boot/ 3. check for presence of file /boot/bcd 4. grep OS version string from file /boot/bcd If all four steps succeed, the partition is classified as bootable and update-grub writes a boot meny entry. The Win7 system partition on my machine passes all the checks os-prober does, but actually booting from that partition fails with an error message. To solve this, os-prober would have to include some kind of sanity check whether the bootloader configuration on the examined partition is set up correctly and really boots the system. I'm not sure if that is feasible and/or possible at all, and one could also argue that it's up to the user to fix the faulty boot setup on the partition and not blame grub/os-prober for detecting a messed up bootloader. :) Thoughts? BTW, I still think the patch covers a use-case and its functionality could be handy. Thanks, Axel