From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from list by lists.gnu.org with archive (Exim 4.71) id 1TV0h1-0001Gc-V4 for mharc-grub-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 04 Nov 2012 08:56:51 -0500 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:43700) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TV0gz-0001GU-HD for grub-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 04 Nov 2012 08:56:50 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TV0gy-0004aY-88 for grub-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 04 Nov 2012 08:56:49 -0500 Received: from mail-ea0-f169.google.com ([209.85.215.169]:34599) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TV0gy-0004aU-0S for grub-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 04 Nov 2012 08:56:48 -0500 Received: by mail-ea0-f169.google.com with SMTP id k11so2291511eaa.0 for ; Sun, 04 Nov 2012 05:56:47 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=message-id:date:from:user-agent:mime-version:to:subject:references :in-reply-to:x-enigmail-version:content-type; bh=CoXb71nfWnKeu51Xa4KriXboxxVrGz+0D0n7UWPfDyY=; b=02TrJl0PQHv7xHtZDYb0mpFwKERJUAMS3FgxAH04+GksaQb9yEnyh/rQy9jcpz6c07 287gvBj+ozH4LOmFVftRIZXokdPGAttHNT6Jo7KgKyjq21+rHI+g+vByxax4viANmnRz +1ibEHcwhGSk0IpztHcqpKDMkqpkGZXdFk6mCndYlItNKPxFU1tkgIirjy5ww4O2XtPO xLGQOR7pSokkVoAyu44h17vtNRYa0dbmDxlNMSFzdU0FG/w2oDd/Zte1CJPDl1TXq3b7 ES5O1k+6806tAka2qnUpmNnMbNWy7WndnFVkrWFTMSSwr+Gmwk7kt95LMbMxA5mtFeQ3 muLg== Received: by 10.14.182.5 with SMTP id n5mr26705083eem.5.1352037407139; Sun, 04 Nov 2012 05:56:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from debian.x201.phnet (237-40.78-83.cust.bluewin.ch. [83.78.40.237]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id f2sm40099506eep.2.2012.11.04.05.56.45 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Sun, 04 Nov 2012 05:56:46 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <50967415.4040601@gmail.com> Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2012 14:56:37 +0100 From: =?UTF-8?B?VmxhZGltaXIgJ8+GLWNvZGVyL3BoY29kZXInIFNlcmJpbmVua28=?= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0.9) Gecko/20121014 Icedove/10.0.9 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: grub-devel@gnu.org Subject: Re: How many sectors for GRUB 2 References: <50945DB2.7090903@gmx.de> <20121103132052.74bd4e47@opensuse.site> <509522A8.20900@gmx.de> <20121103180415.27b6be3f@opensuse.site> <509528ED.7090105@gmx.de> <20121103184636.70d8b574@opensuse.site> <50953A5C.1070002@gmx.de> <20121103195806.7d14a130@opensuse.site> <50954871.7000300@gmx.de> <20121103210559.7b75a923@opensuse.site> <50959CB5.1030605@gmx.de> <20121104080219.562a0054@opensuse.site> <50966FFB.2060201@gmx.de> In-Reply-To: <50966FFB.2060201@gmx.de> X-Enigmail-Version: 1.4.1 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha512; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="------------enig79EAE372F41FB73CDC499C7B" X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 3.x [fuzzy] X-Received-From: 209.85.215.169 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: Sun, 04 Nov 2012 13:56:50 -0000 This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156) --------------enig79EAE372F41FB73CDC499C7B Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >> >>> That's the problem! >>> What will happen, if the gap is too small? >> grub-install will complaint and the only possibility will be to use >> block list (i.e. point boot sector directly to core.img on filesystem)= =2E >> >>> For that reason I *before* wanted to know how much space is needed. >>> >> To be honest, I do not understand what your goal is. >=20 > Well, after installing Windows 7 + Ubuntu on a new big (500 GB) > harddisk, I was "disgusted" about the waste of 2048 sectors ahead the > 1st partition, which I respect, that could be seen as nitpicking ;-) 1MiB is nothing on the disk sized several hundreds gigabytes and it's surely not worth the pain and the speed penalty. > This lead me to the assumption, that GRUB could use more than 62 sector= s > of the MBR gap if available, to avoid some kind of 2-step loading. > Theoretically there could be a possibility to use GRUB without any > dependency on an existing Linux installation/partition on the disk. > My initial goal was to manually shrink the MBR gap to the "usual" 63 > sectors to avoid this "waste". Aligning on MiB boundary increases speed as well. And do you really care about 1 MiB on 500GB disk? > A 2nd goal: reducing the size of my MBR+GRUB backup. As you know, > installing whatever Microsoft OS will destroy that data. So why saving = 1 > MiB (=3D2048 sectors) if ~26 kB are sufficient? Wrong. Windows rewrites only MBR. Also the only officially supported way to install GRUB is grub-install > 3rd: To my knowledge, some old OS, e.g. MS-DOS, require the old CHS > alignment of sectors on the disk, where the maximum for a cylinder is 6= 3 > sectors. I suspect, if it is possible to install MS-DOS on a > 2048-sector-aligned disk. Only very old DOS may need something like that. Anything after ~1995 will work fine with unaligned partitions. And running anything made before ~1998 natively on modern hardware is asking for trouble on many levels. If you're interested in running such software, use VM, they're very performant and save you loads of trouble when running dinosaurs > 4th: the remaining space could be used for some other sophisticated > purposes. This is not of my current interest, but theoretically may be > for other people. >=20 This space is to be used only by bootloader. Anything else should use files.Files is how data is organised on modern computers. You need a very good reason to use anything else. >=20 > I do not understand, why all this information must be grabbed by a > complicated error-prone script, instead of providing a command, maybe > like "grub-info". Because if you need this info, then you're doing something very wrong. --=20 Regards Vladimir '=CF=86-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko --------------enig79EAE372F41FB73CDC499C7B Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iF4EAREKAAYFAlCWdBwACgkQNak7dOguQgm8iQEAsF9RFHojQU9wsQZq5fNqP/dS EsW2UFM04xreD/0JdpQA/0FqR6sIeVD04jnCR2wqrJ1whXIzuOTrILmPA5R+jP1y =xY3T -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------enig79EAE372F41FB73CDC499C7B--