Subject: Re: sysinst, two more notes
To: Wolfgang Solfrank <ws@tools.de>
From: Hauke Fath <hauke@Espresso.Rhein-Neckar.DE>
List: current-users
Date: 02/15/1999 21:30:23
At 15:48 Uhr +0100 15.02.1999, Wolfgang Solfrank wrote:

>Your problem is that you have a non-standard mbr code installed in the
>first sector of the disk.  (I never looked at what code Linux actually
>installs in there, but it's obvious that that's the origin for your
>problems).  Nevertheless, since there is some valid code in there, the
>install system decides to better not overwrite it.  So you loose :-(.
>
>Offering an option to the user to overwrite the mbr code probably does
>make the most sense here.  Especially, since our new mbr code is capable
>of booting from partitions beyond the 8GB limit that other's mbr code has.
>Most likely, Frank's reworked sysinst code will do this when he is
>finished, and this will be included in 1.4.

Although sysinst/i386 issues don't really belong to current-users (pretty
boring to, say, m68k people)...

What does the first sector / mbr actually contain? I have an i386 machine
at work that hangs during boot because of the ruins of an osbs
installation. Can I get rid of that by replacing the mbr or do I risk
blowing away the partition table? (I recall I got the osbs scree by
restoring the mbr from an old copy after a misguided fdisk experiment.)

	hauke


--
"It's never straight up and down"     (DEVO)