[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
Terry Hill wrote: > This is the thing..using the slackware setup utility, it advises you > to take the option to install to the boot partition, rather than the > MBR - i'd never heard of putting a boot loader anywhere but the MBR. > Option 3 in the choice list gives something like "MBR - This might be > unstable", which is news to me. The tag "MBR" itself is a bit of a > giveaway. I went for the non MBR install just to see what happened > really. > > Thanks for the link Paul, just off to have a read now - and i'll check > the slackbook to see if theres anything there - could just be a simple > case of me skim-reading the option given ;) > > Thanks for your time both :) You can install a bootloader to the "boot block" of your boot partition. With this, it kinda allows you to have nested menus. So, for example, you could have a GRUB system on your MBR that has entries that say "Slackware, Debian, QNX, Windows"; then you have a seperate bootloader installed to the boot-partition for each of those systems allowing you to have individual entries for your Slackware system that don't appear on the same menu as those for Debian. This is the only situation where I have felt it made more sense to have a bootloader installed on the boot partition, however, I still needed *something* installed to the MBR to kick the whole thing off. As I said, I suppose you *could* (and I certainly thought it was possible to) get away with *not* having anything on the MBR of any disk *except* the primary boot disk. Say, using the above example, Slackware and Debian are installed on hda, but QNX and Windows are installed hdc; your BIOS is set to look at the "first disk" (hda) to boot from; your MBR GRUB menu passes control over to the boot-partition of your selected OS. I *presume* you could get away with *not* having anything on the MBR for hdb since you will (under these circumstances) never have the BIOS pass control to the disk itself, you will always have the BIOS passing control to hda (in this example). Having said that... it is only 512b and I don't suppose you can actually use that space for anything else, so why bother ensuring it's blank? Grant. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html