From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "H. Peter Anvin" Subject: Re: switching root fs '/' to boot from RAID1 with grub Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2007 10:02:15 -0800 Message-ID: <472E0927.4000701@zytor.com> References: <20071030210721.386ca2fa@absurd> <1193781699.10336.585.camel@firewall.xsintricity.com> <472A0D7A.4040807@zytor.com> <472B51F0.3080605@panix.com> <472D3A1C.800@tmr.com> <472D402D.6040900@zytor.com> <472D4A86.3090700@tmr.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <472D4A86.3090700@tmr.com> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Bill Davidsen Cc: berk walker , Doug Ledford , Janek Kozicki , linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids Bill Davidsen wrote: > > I don't understand your point, unless there's a Linux bootloader in the > BIOS it will boot whatever 512 bytes are in sector 0. So if that's crap > it doesn't matter what it would do if it was valid, some other bytes > came off the drive instead. Maybe Windows, since there seems to be an > option in Windows to check the boot sector on boot and rewrite it if it > isn't the WinXP one. One of my offspring has that problem, dual boot > system, every time he boots Windows he has to boot from rescue and > reinstall grub. > > I think he could install grub in the partition, make that the active > partition, and the boot would work, but he tried and only type FAT or > VFAT seem to boot, active or not. > The Grub-promoted practice of stuffing the Linux bootloader in the MBR is a bad idea, but that's not the issue here. The issue here is that the bootloader itself is capable of making the decision to reject a corrupt image and boot the next device. The Linux kernel, unfortunately, doesn't have a sane way to do that. -hpa