On 2/13/2022 11:23 AM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
On Du, 13 feb 22, 02:40:27, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
This is my understanding of how grub works.
It looks you are using the old MBR partitioning scheme. The logical
partition indicates that.
So I also assume you are using the legacy booting (not UEFI). So the first
thing that
happens is that you will have an active partition set that your BIOS will
boot (if you have
standard bootcode installed in the first sector of the disk).
Legacy BIOS doesn't have an understanding of partitions, it will just
look for a bootloader in the MBR of the mass storage device chosen to
boot from.
The active / bootable flag was (still is?) a Microsoft thing[1], Linux
bootloaders never cared about it and can load operating systems
regardless if the corresponding partition is marked active or not.
[1] as far as I recall it was used in DOS times to let the bootloader
know which is the system partition, but it could be (ab)used for
multi-booting ;)
Kind regards,
Andrei
That's a good clarification that the active partition is a Microsoft thing
implemented by the bootcode Microsoft installs in the MBR of the device
chosen to boot from. Now for an unanswered question: What
does bootcode installed by Debian Linux in the MBR do? How does it
decide which partition to boot from? I think this is what the OP
is asking.
Regards,
Chuck
