[Mageia-discuss] can bootable partitions be detected during installation?

Fri May 4 11:08:05 CEST 2012

2012/5/4 blind Pete <0123peter at gmail.com>:
+> Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
+>
+>> 2012/5/3 blind Pete <0123peter-
+> Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>:
+>>>
+>>>> But at which moment/occasion would you need that?
+>>> When do you use the installer?
+>>> Incompetent user: every month.
+>>> Tester: every week.
+>>> Mageia user: every nine months.
+>>
+>> No, I meant: at which moment in the install process and for which
+>> occasion?
+>
+> During a standard install at the start of the configuration section
+> there is a point where there is a message about
+> "PREPARING BOOTLOADER" please be patient, searching for other
+> systems, this may take a while, or somthing similar.  Then the
+> Summary pops up.
+>
+> It could be done before that, immediately after partitioning.
+> Perhaps if the advanced button were pressed?
+>
+>>>> Only once when
+>>>> you install the distribution which you think will stay the longest
+> and
+>>>> whos bootloader will go into MBR. After that you don't need it any
+>>>> more because you will have to add new distributions manually to the
+>>>> list.
+>>> You can use drakboot as it is now to add "things to be chainloaded"
+>>> to the list.
+>>
+>> But that makes only sense for the bootloader which is in the MBR. So
+>> you do it once and never again.
+>> Whenever you add a distribution, you put the bootloader of this new
+>> one in its root partition. Then you boot the distribution which has
+>> its bootloader in the MBR and add the relevant 3 lines into its
+>> menu.lst. You can't use drakboot for that.
+>
+> It would make most sense to start with a bootloader in the MBR
+> then go to a root partition bootloader and finaly an operating Lystem,
+> but LiLo and GRUB let you go "up" a level back to the MBR's
+> bootloader, or "sideways".  e.g. From /dev/sda to /dev/sda12
+> to /dev/sda1 to /dev/sda to /dev/sda2 to an OS.  It can even
+> loop to itself, pointless but it works.
+>
+> If you want to do things like that, then you need to be
+> very careful about how you label things.
+>
+> Do different things get listed in Mageia's bootloader config
+> depending on whether it is written to the MBR or the root
+> partition?  Find everything if going to MBR, only list Mageia
+> stuff (and "back") if going to the root partition?
+>
+> BTW I was assuming that every distribution has its own tools.
+> If your "master" installation is Mageia (or even if it is not)
+> you can use drakboot to add chainloader commands to Mageia's
+> GRUB or LiLo configuration.
+
+Well, if you say so, I'm not sure I fully understand what you
+described. Of course I never looked for such an occasion because my
+"steering distribution" (the one with the bootloader in MBR) is a
+small one without X and without any applications except for vim as
+editor (old version of grml, below 100MB) and a few commandline tools
+so it can also serve as a rescue system.
+
+So when I install Mageia after that I go to the summary in the
+installer, configure the bootloader to sit in the root partition of
+Mageia. Then at reboot I boot grml, add the 3 matching lines for the
+Mageia installation to the menu.lst and that's all. Likewise I can do
+with all following installations. I've been doing it for years this
+way.
+
+Of course this is not really something for a totally new user, OTOH a
+totally new user does not have several different distributions on his
+machine. But even such a user will be able to follow instructions (in
+the German mandrivauser.de wiki we have a step-by-step HowTo for
+that).
+
+-- 
+wobo
+