On Fri, 24 Oct 2025 at 05:42, John Gilmore <[email protected]> wrote: > > Brian C. Lane <[email protected]> wrote: > > In theory I'm fine with this, and I agree that the bootloader should > > handle this. Are we sure that nothing depends on this being written? > > The few bytes of code at the start of a particular drive are a very tiny > nail that the whole system's startup depends on. "For want of a > nail...your system won't boot." > > If parted changes to not do this by default, which I agree is likely a > reasonable evolution, the capability to write a bootloader should > probably *remain* in parted, as a separate command for emergencies. If > the capability is still there, then somebody who was depending on this > behavior can ask a search engine what to do and it'll tell them the > simple recovery command (if they can boot their system somehow and get > into parted again, e.g. from an OS installation image). If not, they'll > have to find and configure some other boot loader for their situation, > or "dd" a boot loader from some other drive without clobbering their > partition table -- a much more challenging task.
I disagree. If a user's machines doesn't boot they should re-install their boot loader following relevant instructions, not run parted (a partitioning tool) to install its MBR boot code. Mike
