Re: GRUB2 Sparc

[Marco Gerards <metgerards@student.han.nl>]

Bart Grantham <bart-grubdevel@bartgrantham.com> writes:

> Marco Gerards wrote:
>
>>>Specifically, how are you handling
>>>different filesystem structures in the boot sector?
>>
>> On the PC the bootblock (512 bytes) load the GRUB kernel.  This is a
>> binary image with a maximum size of 32KB (IIRC).  This is loaded from
>> a fixed location and no filesystem specific code is involved.
>
> I suppose that the consequences of this are that filesystems that
> don't store the kernel contiguously (ie. compression, small-file
> consolidation tricks) on disk will be incompatible with GRUB2?  Don't
> get me wrong, I think it's a reasonable tradeoff, I just want to make
> sure I understand correctly.

On the PC GRUB is installed right after the MBR, there you have a
space of 32KB.  You could also store GRUB in some filesystems that
have reserved space for GRUB.  This is filesystem specific.

So GRUB is either installed in a reserved region related to the
partitioning layout or a reserved region related to the filesystem.

There is a third way, that is storing a block list.  In that case you
have very little space, just enough to store a block list.  In that
case GRUB can be stored inside the filesystem and GRUB is not stored
contiguously.  I think this is what lilo does.

--
Marco