From: Stefan Ondrejicka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: New commands to allow booting obscure OS's from logical disks in extended
partiton
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 17:07:17 +0200 (MET DST)
> I invented one dirty trick which will allow me to do so. The idea is to
> map logical disks from extended partion to one entry in primary partition.
> It should make some partitioning programs unhappy because of overlapping
> partitions on a disk, but is working perfectly.
I don't like your idea, since you break the rule that no extended
partition should overlap any primary paritition. Boot loaders are
bound to follow a lot of historical convention and numerous rules,
because it is so difficult to maintain compatibilities with other
software and hardware, such as BIOS and operating systems. Thus, I
don't apply anything that is possible to spoil the effort.
However, on the other hand, I can see why you want such a
feature. So, let's think of another way to satisfy your wish.
Considering what's bad with your idea, I realize that there is no
reason why the information on a mapped partition should be in an
extended partition. It can be either in an ordinary file or in a GRUB
configuration file. Here is a virtual example:
# Note that GRUB can calculate the starting CHS and the ending CHS!
grub> partset (hd0,2) START LEN
# If you want to change the partition type
grub> parttype (hd0,2) 0x83
# If you want to set the active flag
grub> root (hd0,2)
grub> makeactive
# If you want to replace the entire partition table
grub> partcopy (hd0) (fd0)/mbr_image
What do you think?
Okuji
