On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, Tom Oehser wrote:
> Yes, it would be a great fit if is wasn't so large! Maybe you could work
> on the source and see if you can get it down from 12K to something more
> reasonable? I could always include just the 446 bytes and use dd to
> install... I think it fails a couple of tests, one is that it duplicates
> functionality, almost as ridiculous as having both vi and emacs on a
> rescue disk would be (maybe I should just use 'ed' instead?) two is that
> it isn't something that enough of the users will be looking for and
> wanting. Lilo is OK and is the most common thing to need repairing on a
> system being fixed, and it won't stop working unless you really overwrite
> the boot.b file it points to. I will take a look at it and see what the
> 12K of install-mbr really does... -TOm
By looking at the man-page, it seems that the installer does two things:
* configure the loader (like telling it what to show/not-show on the
boot menu)
* actually install it in the MBR.
So yes, one could have just "mbr.b", pre-configured to some settings (for
instance, to allow the boot menu and show all options: 1,2,3,4,F); then
just dd it.
One scenario where mbr does not duplicate the functionality of LILO is
when the Linux partition that hosts /boot is really hosed beyond repair,
and you just want to do a "quick fix" in order to be able to boot other
partitions. This is my case: I have machines which double-boot NT and
Linux. I was allowed to install Linux under the condition of not
disrupting the normal operation of NT during daytime. If the machines had
LILO on the MBR, and something happened to the Linux partition, I would
want to have a quick way to revert the machines to boot NT. Putting mbr
on the MBR (and possibly flagging the NT partition as active with fdisk)
is the quickest, because you don't need to re-install Linux in order to
have a working LILO.
Granted, this scenario could be a rare one, but still...
Cheers,
Jose
--
Jose L Marin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dept of Mathematics [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Heriot-Watt University
Edinburgh EH14 4AS, U.K.
Phone: +44 131 451 3893
Fax: +44 131 451 3249
