On Friday, 9 December 2022 17:17:24 GMT Mark Knecht wrote: > On Fri, Dec 9, 2022 at 4:07 AM Arve Barsnes <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Fri, 9 Dec 2022 at 11:55, Michael <[email protected]> wrote: > > > To check the GRUB version of the second OS without booting into it, you > > can > > > > grep for grub in its /var/log/emerge.log > > > > Or see what version is named in the /usr/share/doc/grub-2.?? folder name. > > > > On the other hand, if the question is *really* about knowing if > > grub-install has been run on one of the machines, I don't know if > > there is a way. Probably look at change dates on the files in > > /boot/grub/? > > > > Regards, > > Arve > > Thanks to both of you for your responses. I appreciate them, although I > don't think they get as far down in the weeds as I was wondering about. > > My understanding of the boot loader - and maybe I'm using the wrong > terminology so if I am someone please correct me - is that at the start > of boot BIOS tells the processor to read some part of the disk and it is > the code read there that gets the whole process kicked off and > out of BIOS's control. > > I'm wondering about that first bit of code being written by installation > #2's update into the initial section of installation #1's disk. > > Rethink the picture a bit and make installation #1 Windows and > installation #2 Linux. Assume that after updating each install, and > further assume both installs made some very minor change to their > own first bits of code on the disk, and assume everything still > boots correctly, BUT assume that one of the updates actually > wrote into the other install's initial boot code and replaced it with > their own because it was confused about which disk it was > supposed to put this on. How would I be able to determine that > this happened? > > It's not totally a thought experiment. One machine I have which > is dual boot recently complained that the original disk grub was > installed on had changed when in fact there hadn't been any > hardware changes and I had to carefully figure out how to > answer a couple of questions. After the fact I started to wonder > about this edge case. > > I think it comes down to reading what's on the disk with a > hex editor possibly but I know nothing about what to expect > there. > > Thanks, > Mark
Before I venture a potentially wrong answer, could you please clarify if we are talking about a UEFI MoBo, or a legacy BIOS MoBo.
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