Protection of boot sector and embedded area
Hi Is there a setting for grub-install/grub-setup where, if set, will never actually over write the boot sector and embedded area of my HD? I don't mind grub.conf being written to, I just do not want the boot up executables written to. For example, if I have an Ubuntu install, and the grub package gets upgraded, is there a way to stop the automatic update from attacking the boot and embedded area of my HD? Kind Regards James ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Protection of boot sector and embedded area
2009/9/26 Colin Watson cjwat...@ubuntu.com: On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 09:28:12AM +0100, James Courtier-Dutton wrote: Is there a setting for grub-install/grub-setup where, if set, will never actually over write the boot sector and embedded area of my HD? I don't mind grub.conf being written to, I just do not want the boot up executables written to. For example, if I have an Ubuntu install, and the grub package gets upgraded, is there a way to stop the automatic update from attacking the boot and embedded area of my HD? At the moment, this is a recipe for GRUB becoming unusable, as the interface between the core image and grub.cfg is not yet stable. As such, I expect that the Ubuntu package will be changing to make this harder to do by accident. I suppose I have a special case. My HD already has a custom boot sector and embedded area doing something else. So I cannot install grub there at all. I am currently installing grub onto a usb stick and booting Linux from the usb stick, with the usb stick just doing the grub bit for me. I want to make sure that if I do automatic upgrades in ubuntu, it will never accidentally wipe the custom boot sector and embedded areas of my HD. I will manually do grub-install to update the grub on my usb stick. ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: 16bit x86 assembler/disassembler
Am Freitag, den 25.09.2009, 22:25 +0100 schrieb James Courtier-Dutton: 2009/9/25 Seth Goldberg seth.goldb...@sun.com: Hi, gas supports 16-bit code with .code16 directives. What are you trying to do? I would like to have some .c code, compile it into 16-bit x86 code. I then want to look at the resulting 16-bit x86 code with a disassembler. This is totally off topic to this list. If you want to see what asm code gcc generates just use gcc with -S option and the asm code gets stored in an .s file Debian has x86dis packaged, which seems to be an x86 disassembler. But please don't continue that topic on this list. Search another place to get help, this has absolutely nothing to do with GRUB specific development. -- Felix Zielcke Proud Debian Maintainer ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Protection of boot sector and embedded area
On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 09:28:12AM +0100, James Courtier-Dutton wrote: Is there a setting for grub-install/grub-setup where, if set, will never actually over write the boot sector and embedded area of my HD? I don't mind grub.conf being written to, I just do not want the boot up executables written to. For example, if I have an Ubuntu install, and the grub package gets upgraded, is there a way to stop the automatic update from attacking the boot and embedded area of my HD? At the moment, this is a recipe for GRUB becoming unusable, as the interface between the core image and grub.cfg is not yet stable. As such, I expect that the Ubuntu package will be changing to make this harder to do by accident. -- Colin Watson [cjwat...@ubuntu.com] ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Protection of boot sector and embedded area
2009/9/26 Colin Watson cjwat...@ubuntu.com: In any case, run 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc' and make sure no devices are selected for the GRUB install devices: question. Thank you. Just out of interest, where is the answer to that question stored? Just to clarify, by selecting no devices, grub boot sector will never be installed/upgraded automatically? ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
LUA is moving to grub-extras
Hi, LUA support will soon be moved to grub-extras. In general, grub-extras is the place for extra functionality that relies on external libraries. The official version of GRUB is meant to have a strong legal foundation, so that the FSF can garantee that none of its users will be threatened by copyright predators. In the future, please take this into account when proposing major code imports. If any person with GRUB commit access is interested in obtaining access to grub-extras for maintaining LUA (or LUA-based scripts) there, I'll be glad to add him. Please contact me directly. -- Robert Millan The DRM opt-in fallacy: Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all. ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Macbook, Efi, Display mode
On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 8:34 PM, Stefan Bienert bien...@zbh.uni-hamburg.de wrote: Hi again, 2 days of booting with grub2 in EFI mode and still happy... Now I have several further questions: - Depending on whether an USB disk is connected, or not, the hd numbers change. Is there a setup to avoid changing the numbers in the entries on boot? Hi, You can use search command to locate the root device. Something like this: search --set /vmlinuz linux /vmlinuz ... initrd /initrd.img - The menu is rather small, is it possible to expand the display to 1280x800? - Since I own a Macbook, I want my boot manager nice and shiny. How do I set the looks? E.g. Background image? Couldn't find helpful info in the manual-draft. If you use my repo, you can enable graphic mode for EFI, it even allows you to set a background image. Add these lines in grub.cfg: set gfxmode=0x0 loadfont /unifont.pf2 terminal_output.gfxterm background_image /splash.png You need to include these modules when generating grub.efi: video efi_fb gfxterm font png jpeg unifont.pf2 is the font file, you can generate it using grub-mkfont, or just download it here: http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/unifont.pf2 -- Bean gitgrub home: http://github.com/grub/grub/ my fork page: http://github.com/bean123/grub/ ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
pci-e config register modification in grub
Hi everyone, Wondering if grub2 can have an additional module added to do various pci-e Configuration Register fixups/modifications before launching into XP/Win7/Linux. Specifically I require: 1/ ability to modify PCI Bridge Configuration Registers for DIY ViDock project http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5324240 to allow the video card to work [ current workaround is boot DOS, use pcitool to do the mod, then use grub4dos to chainload the OS ] 2/ ability to restore a mini pci-e port's Extended PCI Configuration registers config to reverse HP bios whitelisting of wifi cards (See bottom of HP Mini pci-e wifi bios threadhttp://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/topic9388-105.html. No current tool can do this that I've found, with the DOS pcitool extending only to the 00-FF pci-e configuration registers, not the extended registers. I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 with grub as the bootloader. Can these features be added to grub via say the menu.lst file as well as some config file that can store the dump for (2) above?? Nando ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Protection of boot sector and embedded area
Am Samstag, den 26.09.2009, 11:40 +0100 schrieb James Courtier-Dutton: 2009/9/26 Colin Watson cjwat...@ubuntu.com: In any case, run 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc' and make sure no devices are selected for the GRUB install devices: question. Thank you. Just out of interest, where is the answer to that question stored? Inside the debconf database. /var/cache/debconf/ Just to clarify, by selecting no devices, grub boot sector will never be installed/upgraded automatically? Yes -- Felix Zielcke Proud Debian Maintainer ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Protection of boot sector and embedded area
On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 10:07:41AM +0100, James Courtier-Dutton wrote: 2009/9/26 Colin Watson cjwat...@ubuntu.com: At the moment, this is a recipe for GRUB becoming unusable, as the interface between the core image and grub.cfg is not yet stable. As such, I expect that the Ubuntu package will be changing to make this harder to do by accident. I suppose I have a special case. My HD already has a custom boot sector and embedded area doing something else. So I cannot install grub there at all. I am currently installing grub onto a usb stick and booting Linux from the usb stick, with the usb stick just doing the grub bit for me. I want to make sure that if I do automatic upgrades in ubuntu, it will never accidentally wipe the custom boot sector and embedded areas of my HD. I will manually do grub-install to update the grub on my usb stick. In future I hope that it'll be possible to tell the package to use the USB stick in a way which is safe - i.e. it definitely won't use the hard disk. Of course, it might object to the USB stick going missing ... In any case, run 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc' and make sure no devices are selected for the GRUB install devices: question. -- Colin Watson [cjwat...@ubuntu.com] ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Macbook, Efi, Display mode
Hi again, 2 days of booting with grub2 in EFI mode and still happy... Now I have several further questions: - Depending on whether an USB disk is connected, or not, the hd numbers change. Is there a setup to avoid changing the numbers in the entries on boot? - The menu is rather small, is it possible to expand the display to 1280x800? - Since I own a Macbook, I want my boot manager nice and shiny. How do I set the looks? E.g. Background image? Couldn't find helpful info in the manual-draft. greetings, Stefan ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Macbook, Efi, Display mode
Stefan Bienert wrote: Hi again, 2 days of booting with grub2 in EFI mode and still happy... Now I have several further questions: - Depending on whether an USB disk is connected, or not, the hd numbers change. Is there a setup to avoid changing the numbers in the entries on boot? Use UUIDs - The menu is rather small, is it possible to expand the display to 1280x800? - Since I own a Macbook, I want my boot manager nice and shiny. How do I set the looks? E.g. Background image? Couldn't find helpful info in the manual-draft. Use Bean's repo greetings, Stefan ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: configure does not honor CC when testing for -mcmodel=large
Colin Watson wrote: On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 03:35:57PM -0700, Seth Goldberg wrote: Ok, setting TARGET_CC to gcc-4.3.2 works around this. My assumption was that CC was the right environment variable (technically, it is, since I'm not cross-compiling. Any reason not to use --host as well as --target then, so that Autoconf knows you want to force a specific host platform? If you do that and the values provided for host and target are the same, GRUB's configure script won't assume cross-compilation GRUB is one of rare projects having all 3 platform variables: build: where gcc is executed host: where grub-install/grub-emu/... is executed target: the system which needs the bootloader. Because sometimes target!=host we need 2 compilers in general case. Additionally booting environment is different from OS so I would say that grub2 is always cross-compiled. ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Protection of boot sector and embedded area
James Courtier-Dutton wrote: 2009/9/26 Colin Watson cjwat...@ubuntu.com: On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 09:28:12AM +0100, James Courtier-Dutton wrote: Is there a setting for grub-install/grub-setup where, if set, will never actually over write the boot sector and embedded area of my HD? I don't mind grub.conf being written to, I just do not want the boot up executables written to. For example, if I have an Ubuntu install, and the grub package gets upgraded, is there a way to stop the automatic update from attacking the boot and embedded area of my HD? At the moment, this is a recipe for GRUB becoming unusable, as the interface between the core image and grub.cfg is not yet stable. As such, I expect that the Ubuntu package will be changing to make this harder to do by accident. I suppose I have a special case. My HD already has a custom boot sector and embedded area doing something else. So I cannot install grub there at all. It's generally a bad idea to chase grub out of MBR+embed area. It often results in unreliable configurations. Could you detail your usecase so we can seek for a bettere solution? I am currently installing grub onto a usb stick and booting Linux from the usb stick, with the usb stick just doing the grub bit for me. I want to make sure that if I do automatic upgrades in ubuntu, it will never accidentally wipe the custom boot sector and embedded areas of my HD. I will manually do grub-install to update the grub on my usb stick. ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: pci-e config register modification in grub
Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko wrote: Nando wrote: Hi everyone, Wondering if grub2 can have an additional module added to do various pci-e Configuration Register fixups/modifications before launching into XP/Win7/Linux. Specifically I require: For Linux I would recommend to contact developpers of corresponding kernel subsystem - it will help them to improve driver. Further discussion is in relation to MS stuff. 1/ ability to modify PCI Bridge Configuration Registers for DIY ViDock project http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5324240 to allow the video card to work [ current workaround is boot DOS, use pcitool to do the mod, then use grub4dos to chainload the OS ] 2/ ability to restore a mini pci-e port's Extended PCI Configuration registers config to reverse HP bios whitelisting of wifi cards (See bottom of HP Mini pci-e wifi bios thread http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/topic9388-105.html. No current tool can do this that I've found, with the DOS pcitool extending only to the 00-FF pci-e configuration registers, not the extended registers. I'm not familiar with pci-e and don't know how much additional code would be required considering already existing pci code. Considering windows share chainloader command with other OSes too one could add a command winfix which will autodetect and do all the fixes necessary for windows and then 30_os_prober.in can be modified to use this. This way user doesn't need manual configuration. If autodetecting is too cumbersome one could have separate commands in grub to do exactly the fix you need. Could you make the patch and send it here. If you need to import code from another project discuss it here first - not all code is suitable for grub I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 with grub as the bootloader. Can these features be added to grub via say the menu.lst file as well as some config file that can store the dump for (2) above?? Nando ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: pci-e config register modification in grub
Nando wrote: Hi everyone, Wondering if grub2 can have an additional module added to do various pci-e Configuration Register fixups/modifications before launching into XP/Win7/Linux. Specifically I require: 1/ ability to modify PCI Bridge Configuration Registers for DIY ViDock project http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5324240 to allow the video card to work [ current workaround is boot DOS, use pcitool to do the mod, then use grub4dos to chainload the OS ] 2/ ability to restore a mini pci-e port's Extended PCI Configuration registers config to reverse HP bios whitelisting of wifi cards (See bottom of HP Mini pci-e wifi bios thread http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/topic9388-105.html. No current tool can do this that I've found, with the DOS pcitool extending only to the 00-FF pci-e configuration registers, not the extended registers. I'm not familiar with pci-e and don't know how much additional code would be required considering already existing pci code. Considering windows share chainloader command with other OSes too one could add a command winfix which will autodetect and do all the fixes necessary for windows and then 30_os_prober.in can be modified to use this. This way user doesn't need manual configuration. If autodetecting is too cumbersome one could have separate commands in grub to do exactly the fix you need. Could you make the patch and send it here. If you need to import code from another project discuss it here first - not all code is suitable for grub I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 with grub as the bootloader. Can these features be added to grub via say the menu.lst file as well as some config file that can store the dump for (2) above?? Nando ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Macbook, Efi, Display mode
Hi, I think we need better hinting for efi disks. Since efi supports finding a disk based on its pci information and port connection, why not pass that information as a hint to reduce the amount of time required or to eliminate it completely? --S On Sep 26, 2009, at 6:13 AM, Bean bean12...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 8:34 PM, Stefan Bienert bien...@zbh.uni-hamburg.de wrote: Hi again, 2 days of booting with grub2 in EFI mode and still happy... Now I have several further questions: - Depending on whether an USB disk is connected, or not, the hd numbers change. Is there a setup to avoid changing the numbers in the entries on boot? Hi, You can use search command to locate the root device. Something like this: search --set /vmlinuz linux /vmlinuz ... initrd /initrd.img - The menu is rather small, is it possible to expand the display to 1280x800? - Since I own a Macbook, I want my boot manager nice and shiny. How do I set the looks? E.g. Background image? Couldn't find helpful info in the manual-draft. If you use my repo, you can enable graphic mode for EFI, it even allows you to set a background image. Add these lines in grub.cfg: set gfxmode=0x0 loadfont /unifont.pf2 terminal_output.gfxterm background_image /splash.png You need to include these modules when generating grub.efi: video efi_fb gfxterm font png jpeg unifont.pf2 is the font file, you can generate it using grub-mkfont, or just download it here: http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/unifont.pf2 -- Bean gitgrub home: http://github.com/grub/grub/ my fork page: http://github.com/bean123/grub/ ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Macbook, Efi, Display mode
Hi again, Hi, You can use search command to locate the root device. Something like this: search --set /vmlinuz linux /vmlinuz ... initrd /initrd.img Well, this does not work. I get a message about wrong search term or something similar. If you use my repo, you can enable graphic mode for EFI, it even allows you to set a background image. Add these lines in grub.cfg: set gfxmode=0x0 loadfont /unifont.pf2 terminal_output.gfxterm background_image /splash.png Does this go on one line? Where does the image go? Root of the partition where the grub.efi is? I tried the lines above each on their own line, picture is on the linux partition. You need to include these modules when generating grub.efi: video efi_fb gfxterm font png jpeg Did that. unifont.pf2 is the font file, you can generate it using grub-mkfont, or just download it here: http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/unifont.pf2 I left the font out for the first try. Does this hurt? greetins, Stefan ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Macbook, Efi, Display mode
Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko wrote: Stefan Bienert wrote: Hi again, 2 days of booting with grub2 in EFI mode and still happy... Now I have several further questions: - Depending on whether an USB disk is connected, or not, the hd numbers change. Is there a setup to avoid changing the numbers in the entries on boot? Use UUIDs What is that? Where do I get it from? How do I incorporate this into grub.cg? greetings, Stefan ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Macbook, Efi, Display mode
Am Samstag, den 26.09.2009, 21:54 +0200 schrieb Stefan Bienert: Hi again, Hi, You can use search command to locate the root device. Something like this: search --set /vmlinuz linux /vmlinuz ... initrd /initrd.img Well, this does not work. I get a message about wrong search term or something similar. Because you have to use search --set --file /vmlinuz By the way search --help would tell you If you use my repo, you can enable graphic mode for EFI, it even allows you to set a background image. Add these lines in grub.cfg: set gfxmode=0x0 loadfont /unifont.pf2 terminal_output.gfxterm background_image /splash.png Does this go on one line? If you want to have it on one line you have so seperate them with ; just like in bash Where does the image go? Root of the partition where the grub.efi is? I tried the lines above each on their own line, picture is on the linux partition. Either use set root= or search --set --file like above. Just as with GRUB Legacy root specifies where it looks for the file unifont.pf2 is the font file, you can generate it using grub-mkfont, or just download it here: http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/unifont.pf2 I left the font out for the first try. Does this hurt? Without a font you only get ? in gfxterm -- Felix Zielcke Proud Debian Maintainer ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Macbook, Efi, Display mode
Am Samstag, den 26.09.2009, 21:55 +0200 schrieb Stefan Bienert: Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko wrote: Stefan Bienert wrote: Hi again, 2 days of booting with grub2 in EFI mode and still happy... Now I have several further questions: - Depending on whether an USB disk is connected, or not, the hd numbers change. Is there a setup to avoid changing the numbers in the entries on boot? Use UUIDs What is that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUID Where do I get it from? grub-probe -t fs_uuid / or grub-probe -t fs_uuid -d /dev/sda1 How do I incorporate this into grub.cg? search --set --fs-uuid abc-123... -- Felix Zielcke Proud Debian Maintainer ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Macbook, Efi, Display mode
And another Hi, update: Using '--file' in the search did the trick! I really start loving Grub2: Really faster booting, seems to be easy to configure... 2 days of booting with grub2 in EFI mode and still happy... Now I have several further questions: - Depending on whether an USB disk is connected, or not, the hd numbers change. Is there a setup to avoid changing the numbers in the entries on boot? Use UUIDs What is that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUID You know, you make feeling me like a noob again. Where do I get it from? grub-probe -t fs_uuid / or grub-probe -t fs_uuid -d /dev/sda1 How do I incorporate this into grub.cg? search --set --fs-uuid abc-123... Just for the sake of completion: abc-123.../path/to/kernel? I prefer using the search for a file, since I may switch disks without resetting the uuid. Now for the eye-candy... greetings and many, many thanks, Stefan ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Protection of boot sector and embedded area
2009/9/26 Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko phco...@gmail.com: It's generally a bad idea to chase grub out of MBR+embed area. It often results in unreliable configurations. Could you detail your usecase so we can seek for a bettere solution? The other thing sitting in the embedded area is a whole disc encryption product. It takes up about 60 sectors of the 64 sectors of the embedded area. I don't think that there is a standard way of managing who has priority over the embedded area. I think it would be good if one could put grub into the beginning of a partition. The problem with this is that I don't know if there is room to put grub at the beginning of an ext3 or lvm partition. If it were possible, it would make grub much more compatible with Dual boot systems. ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Protection of boot sector and embedded area
James Courtier-Dutton wrote: 2009/9/26 Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko phco...@gmail.com: It's generally a bad idea to chase grub out of MBR+embed area. It often results in unreliable configurations. Could you detail your usecase so we can seek for a bettere solution? The other thing sitting in the embedded area is a whole disc encryption product. It takes up about 60 sectors of the 64 sectors of the embedded area. I guess you speak about truecrypt. In this case the solution I would recommend is to make grub load truecrypt's embedding area from a file on the disk (it probably can be extracted from truecrypt w/o installing booter). It's not a difficult task, just nobody did it yet (volunteers are welcome). Beware that truecrypt is distributed under a license which has legal danger to the end user. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems#TrueCrypt Of course it's your choice to use it or not but I would suggest to avoid such software especially for the data you need to protect I don't think that there is a standard way of managing who has priority over the embedded area. I think it would be good if one could put grub into the beginning of a partition. The problem with this is that I don't know if there is room to put grub at the beginning of an ext3 or lvm partition. If it were possible, it would make grub much more compatible with Dual boot systems. ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Protection of boot sector and embedded area
James Courtier-Dutton wrote: I think it would be good if one could put grub into the beginning of a partition. The problem with this is that I don't know if there is room to put grub at the beginning of an ext3 or lvm partition. If it were possible, it would make grub much more compatible with Dual boot systems. Some partitions like reiserfs (64K reserved for bootloader) and lvm (unusable space) have some space where core.img can be hold but such cases are a minority. XFS doesn't even have space for boot sector. ext* has only 2 sectors available. Too few. FAT32 has ~16K reserved. Too few. ZFS has 8K reserved. Too few. ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Protection of boot sector and embedded area
2009/9/26 Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko phco...@gmail.com: James Courtier-Dutton wrote: 2009/9/26 Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko phco...@gmail.com: It's generally a bad idea to chase grub out of MBR+embed area. It often results in unreliable configurations. Could you detail your usecase so we can seek for a bettere solution? The other thing sitting in the embedded area is a whole disc encryption product. It takes up about 60 sectors of the 64 sectors of the embedded area. I guess you speak about truecrypt. In this case the solution I would recommend is to make grub load truecrypt's embedding area from a file on the disk (it probably can be extracted from truecrypt w/o installing booter). It's not a difficult task, just nobody did it yet (volunteers are welcome). Beware that truecrypt is distributed under a license which has legal danger to the end user. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems#TrueCrypt Of course it's your choice to use it or not but I would suggest to avoid such software especially for the data you need to protect It is not truecrypt. I would argue that a full disk encryption product should be in the boot sector/embedded area and everything else, even grub should load after it. ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: Protection of boot sector and embedded area
James Courtier-Dutton wrote: 2009/9/26 Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko phco...@gmail.com: James Courtier-Dutton wrote: 2009/9/26 Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko phco...@gmail.com: It's generally a bad idea to chase grub out of MBR+embed area. It often results in unreliable configurations. Could you detail your usecase so we can seek for a bettere solution? The other thing sitting in the embedded area is a whole disc encryption product. It takes up about 60 sectors of the 64 sectors of the embedded area. I guess you speak about truecrypt. In this case the solution I would recommend is to make grub load truecrypt's embedding area from a file on the disk (it probably can be extracted from truecrypt w/o installing booter). It's not a difficult task, just nobody did it yet (volunteers are welcome). Beware that truecrypt is distributed under a license which has legal danger to the end user. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems#TrueCrypt Of course it's your choice to use it or not but I would suggest to avoid such software especially for the data you need to protect It is not truecrypt. I would argue that a full disk encryption product should be in the boot sector/embedded area and everything else, even grub should load after it. It has no benefit other than giving you a wrong impression of additional security (feel free to expose your arguments). Actually having grub before disk encryption is beneficial for configuration purposes (encryption program is only loaded when needed) ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
Re: grub-0.97: btrfs multidevice support [PATCH]
On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 11:01 PM, Colin Watson cjwat...@ubuntu.com wrote: On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 04:09:51PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote: On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 08:38:10AM +1000, Bron Gondwana wrote: On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 10:21:46PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote: I'm sorry but GRUB Legacy is not maintained. At least not by us; we've deprecated it in favour of GRUB 2. It is also being abandoned by distributors, so I wouldn't recommend that you put any effort in developing for it. You've been spouting this line for years, and yet my Ubuntu 10.4 machine uses, guess what, GRUB 1. I assume you typoed, since there's no such thing as Ubuntu 10.4 yet. When there is (well, 10.04 anyway), it will use GRUB 2 by default. Edward - please do continue to develop patches for GRUB 1 (the one that still actually works plenty well enough for lots of people) and ignore the naysayers who are happy to throw out backwards compatibility. It would be great if somebody could take up Edward's work and port it to GRUB 2. If nobody else does then I'd be interested in doing so myself, although I will not be able to start for a month or two from now. Is there any guild lines for porting GPLv2 code to GRUB2? I've looked at the GRUB2 wiki but very few things are documented there (http://grub.enbug.org/). I'd like to see what it would take to port the patches. If I can afford it, I'd like to try. Robert is working hard on making GRUB 2 usable, and is just advising Edward that, right now, there is no upstream for GRUB Legacy who could either accept or usefully comment on his patch. It would of course be possible for some people (presumably mostly the distributors who rely on it) to get together and declare themselves the new upstream for GRUB Legacy, but most of the people who might be interested in such things seem to have either lost interest or thrown their weight behind GRUB 2 upstream. Certainly this distributor right here is in the latter camp as it seems much more likely to produce a result that meets our needs in the end. (Plus, I think such a revitalised upstream would be a caretaker at best, and wouldn't really be able to effectively work on some of the major issues that have dogged distributors of GRUB Legacy for years without reinventing the wheel of GRUB 2.) This isn't naysaying those people who post patches for GRUB Legacy - but given the reality that nobody is maintaining GRUB Legacy upstream right now, which is better, to have your patch ignored or to receive a note saying that it's against an unmaintained target? I'd go for not being ignored any day. -- Colin Watson [cjwat...@ubuntu.com] -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-btrfs in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html -- Cheers, Peng Tao State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology Beijing Univ. of Posts and Telecoms. ___ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
