[Wylug-help] Re: Wylug-help Digest, Vol 10, Issue 11

[Dr A V Le Blanc]

Jason Lander <jason at env.leeds.ac.uk> wrote:
> You can see the contents of the MBR on hda1 by running....
> 
>  dd if=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1 | od -c
> 
> BEING very careful to type if= not of= in the dd command.
> 
> If it has GRUB installed, there will be the letters G R U B in there 
> somewhere.

Well, I use 'strings', but note:

     avl 08:39:38> dd if=/dev/hda count=1 |strings
     1+0 records in
     1+0 records out
     512 bytes transferred in 0.024954 seconds (20518 bytes/sec)
     LILO
     ZRrI
     D|f1
     GRUB
     Geom
     Hard Disk
     Read
      Error

This disk certainly never had LILO installed, but the string is
there!  If you look at grub's stage1 file, the one that gets
installed (with modifications) in the boot sector, you'll see:

     ZRrI
     D|f1
     GRUB
     Geom
     Hard Disk
     Read
      Error
     Floppy

so that the LILO on the disk must have come from somewhere else!
As far as I know, the only way to be certain that GRUB is installed
on a disk (or partition) is to reinstall it using the GRUB install
command (and I don't mean the GRUB setup command).

     -- Owen

     -- Owen