[Wylug-discuss] Mandrake and WinXP

[Dave Fisher]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2005 at 10:52:06AM +0000, John Hodrien wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, James Holden wrote:
>
>
> >You can boot Linux with XP's boot loader, but it's not the best way to
> >do it.
>
> Just out of interest, why is it not the best way to do it?  If you've got p1
> as windows and p2 as linux, you end up with (normally):
>
> MBR GRUB
> p1  NTLDR
> p2  NOTHING
>
> If you went the other way, wouldn't you just have:
>
> MBR (standard MS boot off active partion code)
> p1  NTLDR
> p2  GRUB

I'm not completely certain of the details re grub but there has been a
historic annoyance using LILO as a secondary loader to an NT/2K/XP
bootloader on the MBR.

You once had to copy an image of the 512k LILO boot sector to the
Windows partition (typically calling it something like BOOTSEK.LIN) then
add a line to C:\BOOT.INI in to point the Windows bootloader at it.

This was/is necessary because the Windows bootloader was only designed
to boot multiple versions of Windows/DOS (surprised?).  Perhaps things
have improved and it can now point directly to a raw partition boot
sector.  If not, read on ...

Using the method I've described is fine until you upgrade, add another
kernel, or build your own kernel.  Which is a surprisingly common
occurance if you want to use modern consumer peripherals like hardware
video encoders and remote controls {sigh}.

When you re-run LILO to boot the new kernel the LILO boot sector is
changed to accomodate the new system.map.

Occasionally you get lucky and BOOTSEK.LIN still points to the right
place on the Linux partition to boot LILO, in most cases it doesn't, so
your Linux partition becomes unbootable.

I doubt whether most newbies would have the knowledge or confidence
to use a rescue disk to find and copy the new LILO boot sector to the
correct place, re-edit C:\BOOT.INI then re-boot.  Perhaps I'm
underestimating them?

Grub is smarter and more configurable than LILO, e.g. allowing you to
manually boot individual kernels simply by giving it the partition
number and path to the kernel.

But, on the basis of my admittedly very limited knowledge of grub, I
would have thought that the deficiencies of the Windows boot loader re
booting raw partitions would cause the same problems for running grub as
a secondary boot loader.

Even if my knowledge is outdated, I'd say that using Grub on the MBR is
by far the most flexible and easily managed solution.  On the other
hand, LILO is probably the easiest to configure for the first time.

Both of them are much more capable and managable than the Windows
bootloader.

Dave