From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with archive (Exim 4.43) id 1P0XNu-0002Iq-5T for mharc-grub-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 28 Sep 2010 06:26:06 -0400 Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=58233 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1P0XNr-0002Gs-8S for grub-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 28 Sep 2010 06:26:04 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1P0XNp-0004MD-Sc for grub-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 28 Sep 2010 06:26:03 -0400 Received: from smarthost01.mail.zen.net.uk ([212.23.3.140]:60076) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1P0XNp-0004Lj-L6 for grub-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 28 Sep 2010 06:26:01 -0400 Received: from [82.69.40.219] (helo=riva.pelham.vpn.ucam.org) by smarthost01.mail.zen.net.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1P0XNm-0001BG-PD for grub-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 28 Sep 2010 10:25:59 +0000 Received: from cjwatson by riva.pelham.vpn.ucam.org with local (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) for grub-devel@gnu.org id 1P0XNl-00075M-00; Tue, 28 Sep 2010 11:25:57 +0100 Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 11:25:57 +0100 From: Colin Watson To: The development of GNU GRUB Message-ID: <20100928102556.GP21862@riva.ucam.org> References: <20100923221923.GA21862@riva.ucam.org> <20100924002753.GE8579@caffeine.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> <197110.28172.qm@web113213.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20100928080423.GN21862@riva.ucam.org> <897967.51633.qm@web113214.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20100928094129.GO21862@riva.ucam.org> <850483.40307.qm@web113207.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <850483.40307.qm@web113207.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) X-Originating-Smarthost01-IP: [82.69.40.219] X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) Subject: Re: Guidance on conflicts between GNU GRUB and proprietary software X-BeenThere: grub-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 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: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 10:26:04 -0000 On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 02:51:01AM -0700, Bogdan wrote: > > On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 02:10:20AM -0700, Bogdan wrote: > > Yes, which is the only thing that will fit into the boot sector which > > needs to read everything else. > > I disagree. You have more than enough space for both EDD and conventional INT > 13h. If you're thinking about something like ATA/ATAPI, sure, that's just crazy. > Then, you chainload the boot sector of the GRUB partition and that does all the > work that's necessary. If, for whatever reason, EDD is not available, the only > sane thing to do is to move all partitions to the end of the disk and have the > GRUB partition first (yes, I'm aware that's slow but at least it's sane). EDD is still INT 13h, last I checked - just function 42h rather than 2h. We use that. Nevertheless, we still get occasional reports of problems due to BIOS limitations. > > It rather depends on the pattern of free space that's available; > > consider for example the case where there's already a logical partition > > but there is another primary partition between it and the space you > > actually want to use. The precise details are off-topic for this list, > > though. > > Here too, you can just move partitions around a bit (the same comment as above > applies). Moving partitions in an OS installer as a prerequisite for actually working properly (which is a large part of what I care about given my work on Debian and Ubuntu) is far too unsafe, especially if the size of the partition exceeds half the size of the disk, as it often will. Users can of course ask for it if they're clueful, but clueful users are unlikely to run into this problem in the first place! -- Colin Watson [cjwatson@ubuntu.com]