Jim Henderson wrote:
> I'm now wondering if that's the case - if it uses ntfs.sys;

I might have been out of date. Maybe that was ntfs-2g or something.  I 
just know what I've heard people tell me.  My research (as of a day or 
two ago) tells me it's actually all native code, unencumbered by IP.

> Well, yes.  There was specific boot sector code in the MBR to do that, 

Yeah, but every MBR I ever saw does it that way. It used to be the only 
way to boot a different OS.

>> Yes, MS's boot sector follows the standard that's been around for a
>> decade longer than Linux has. GRUB's doesn't. What do you think MS is
>> doing wrong here?
> 
> My understanding is that the Microsoft MBR (at least as included in 
> Vista, possibly with older versions as well) depends on that boot.ini 
> file, much as GRUB depends on the files in /boot/grub.

Maybe Vista, since it has a new boot record. I'll play with it to see.

But everything before that, from DOS thru Win95 through XP all just load 
the first sector of the active partition and jumps to it. Now, that 
said, the first sector of the XP partition relies on NTLDR and boot.ini 
being present. But you'd have to work really hard to fit NTFS into 480 
bytes, even if only to find boot.ini, you know?

> Thing is, it shouldn't require a change to the active partition list.  

It doesn't *require* it. It *allows* it.

> But also, GRUB can be told to change the default for a single boot only - 
> at least I seem to recall there's an option to do that.

Again, my Linux sysop knowledge is probably out of date. The version as 
of a couple years ago doesn't allow that, and I can't afford to risk 
breaking 60 production machines to check if it's better now. :-)

> Installing Linux (at least openSUSE) on a drive with Windows on it, the 
> installer will set Windows up as a menu option so you can select either.  
> Installing Windows after Linux, though, Windows won't add Linux to the 
> boot menu automatically.  I guess that's what I was trying to say.

Oh, it's not automated, sure. But it's pretty trivial, compared to a lot 
of Linux things. :-)  If you wind up installing Windows after Linux, you 
probably are smart enough to type the two or three command-line bits it 
takes to get the Linux boot sector into Windows.

> I had thought GRUB on my system here was set up with the MBR, but I was 
> in fact mistaken - it's in the root partition instead.

I'm not sure what that means. I know *all* of GRUB doesn't fit in the 
MBR, any more than NTLDR does. It's just a question of whether GRUB's 
MBR does something necessary to make GRUB boot, or whether you can boot 
a GRUB partition off someone else's MBR. Right now, my tests (on SuSE 
10.2) are telling me GRUB needs GRUB's MBR. It might be better now, or I 
might be doing something wrong.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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