>>>>> OKUJI Yoshinori writes:
OY> I'm not sure, but the size restrictions for FAT and ext2fs
OY> stage1.5 seem to be 512 bytes. [...] This means that FAT and
OY> ext2fs stage1.5 are not realistic.
All I know is that ext2fs has a reserved ``bootloader'' inode, but I'm
not sure how it is used. I was under the impression that it was
possible to put a bootloader into the filesystem itself, not just a
reserved area.
As for FAT, I was thinking of putting the stage1.5 into a system,
hidden, read-only file, much like msdos.sys. I don't know how much
space is reserved for such special files, but a good reference on FAT
should tell me. I don't think it's that small, though.
OY> One possible way to use them is to have a partition for stage1.5
OY> like OS/2 boot loader. But if we have such a partition, stage1.5
OY> is not required. Ugh...
This is the best way to install the stage2, IMO. When GRUB
installation is an optional part of a Debian installation, a good
thing to do is to recommend a reserved, unformatted partition
(probably about 1MB, to be safe) just for the raw GRUB stage2.
The main thing that bugs me is that the ffs stage1.5 already seems to
be too big for the FFS boot blocks (by about 200 bytes), and it isn't
even full-featured yet (no symlink support). :(
These are all details that will need to be handled later, but I'm not
too concerned about them right now. Thanks for mentioning them,
though...
--
Gordon Matzigkeit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> //\ I'm a FIG (http://www.fig.org/)
Committed to freedom and diversity \// I use GNU (http://www.gnu.org/)
