From: "Peter B. Steiger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: LFS Support List <[email protected]>
To: LFS Support List <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: active partition question
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 09:57:05 -0600
On Wed, 2005-07-27 at 09:23 -0600, lin q wrote:
> Let's say /boot is on partition 1, / is on partition 2, /home on
> partiotion 3 and /mybld on partition 4. It does not matter which
partition I
> select as active partition from booting Linux point of view, then why do
I
> have to name one partition active?
Sure, Linux knows where to find the kernel etc. but first the hardware
has to be able to find Linux. Every OS needs a bit of boot-up code on
the first sector that tells the firmware where to find the OS itself...
that bit of boot-up code is the Master Boot Record (MBR). With multiple
partitions (or drives), you need to tell the powerup firmware which
partition contains your MBR.
--
Peter B. Steiger
Cheyenne, WY
--
Thanks, Peter.
I do have questions though.
MBR refers to the very 1st sector in 1st cylindar on 1st head and 1st track
whatsoever, so there is only 1 MBR in one disk. And if we think about GRUB
case, it has 2 part boot code, stage1 and stage2.
Stage 1 is in MBR together with the partition table. Stage 2 actually does
not matter whether it is in an active partition, is that right? Because
inside Stage1 there is some "hard link" pointer linking to stage 2, so stage
2 can always be loaded.
If the above flow is correct, then "Active partition" does not role in
booting.
Do I miss anything?
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