On Mon, 2004-11-01 at 17:55, Chuck Hast wrote:
> I have and found that it is quite easy to work with. lilo works quite well but
> I find that I can screw it up easier than I can grub. I will forget to put some-
> thing in and fire things up and it abends. Go back and look and find that
> I missed or fatfingered something. Grub is so straight forward that there is
> not that much to miss or fatfinger.
Ultimately a _complete_ understanding of how the PC boot processor
works, the legacy PC BIOS (basic disk) disk label (partition table) and
various boot loaders work is key. Especially when it comes to disk
geometry translation, buggy BIOSes that lack Extended Int13h compliance,
etc...
Leaving these concepts to the OS installer is a risky chance at best.
I have installed hundreds of systems with complex boot setups (DOS,
Linux, NT, OS/2, SCO, Sun, etc...), completely messed up geometries, old
and buggy BIOSes and a myriad of options. As such, I have come to the
following 2 conclusions ...
1) The legacy PC BIOS (basic disk) is the worst form of disk label
(partition table), from boot to geometry issues.
2) If you install more than one each version of DOS, NT or Linux,
you're typically going to have to know what you're doing, because the
installers won't.
Regarding #1, I have been arguing since the release of kernel 2.6 that
the Linux distributors really need to adopt the Logical Disk Manager
(LDM aka dynamic disk) disk label (partition table). LDM is Microsoft's
uniform disk label for multiple architectures (e.g., LDM is used inside
of IA-64's GPT).
Although it is NT5+ centric, it goes a _long_way_ to addressing 4 major
issues with the PC BIOS (basic disk) disk label -- one being storing
geometry and changes in geometry (log), as well as things like SAM-SID
info so NTFS filesystems can be safely written to.
The Linux LDM-NTFS support already reads LDM disk labels. What is
missing is the labeling (partitioning -- e.g., GNU Parted) and boot
loader (e.g., GRUB driver -- LILO works because it is a "dumb" loader
that simply boots a "raw" LBA offset), as well as the installers that
use and support them.
It won't be until then that we can even achieve something like #2, where
multiple versions of NT and Linux can co-exist, and their installers can
accommodate them easily. LDM is not perfect, but it works much, much
better than the legacy PC BIOS (basic disk) disk label.
My $0.02 ...
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