From: Pixel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: extended int13 remarks
Date: 23 Mar 2000 23:13:36 +0100
> I've been testing grub on a few boxes here. We (mandrake) are wondering about
> switching from lilo to grub. grub has a lot of advantages. It's main default is
> people not knowing it => less support will be available on mailing lists...
This is just my thought: People should always ask some software
package of the relevant mailing-list instead of a general-purpose list
(in this case, [EMAIL PROTECTED]). The point is that most users
have various misunderstandings, even computer experts. I've seen
several persons who says wrong things about GRUB, even though they are
all experts from a general point of view. So I strongly recommend that
the user should read the manual very carefully and ask this list if
anything is unclear for her/him.
> Anyway, here are the problems i got with latest release:
> - --disable-lba-support-bitmap-check needed (we can't ask users to recompile if
> they have a buggy bios :)
Yeah, I agree. That's right. But unfortunately I have no better idea
for that. As far as I know, no other boot loader implements any good
detection technique. Sometimes GRUB is better than others; LILO
doesn't provide any option to ignore the bitmap, but GRUB does. The
same thing applies to Debian's ``mbr'' package, too. NetBSD's ``mbr''
behaves in a somewhat interesting way, because it uses LBA mode _only
if_ the cylinder is beyond the limitation of CHS mode. However, this
is not so good, since some BIOSes hang up when the LBA read call is
used.
Therefore, the question is which we should choose: some people can
use LBA mode without the recompilation while other people see their
BIOSes hanging up, or, some people cannot use LBA mode (but don't
forget that they can still use CHS mode) but everybody can use GRUB
safely? For now, I choose the latter, because this is the Right Thing
(according to the spec) and it would be possible to break the machine
of the user's if it hangs up.
> To be able to overcome these 2 pbs, i use this _ugly_ patch below. A better (?)
> solution would be to remove each use of total_sectors for verification.
Why is this necessary? In LBA mode, the number of cylinders is not
important. It is used only in CHS mode.
Okuji
