Boot from a dos floppy and: fdisk /mbr
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (RD Lawrence) writes: > I apologize in advance if this topic has been beaten to death. I've > reviewed at least 100+ articles on usenet and haven't found a > satisfactory answer for a recurring problem. > > Under the heading "How to Uninstall GRUB from my hard disk drive?", the > FAQ states that there "is no concept uninstall in boot loaders, because > if you uninstall a boot loader, an unbootable machine would simply > remain." This isn't always true. > > Imagine a working system with three drives: hd0, hd1, and hd2 with grub > and linux installed on (hd1,1). For various reasons, the user does > *not* want to install grub in the mbr of hd0. The user adds a fourth > drive to the system (hd3) and wants to use it to install a linux system > that will ultimately replace the linux install on hd1. However, he > wants to retain the redundant linux partition on hd1 for reasons of > safety. He can install grub on the new disk (hd3) but this won't have > much impact since hd1 will be first in line at boot time. Perhaps I'm > mistaken but it seems to me that the ideal solution would be to install > a boot loader on hd3 after *REMOVING* the boot loader from hd1. > Removing the old grub bootloader DOES NOT result in an unbootable > system. Rather, it allows the user to boot the system that he prefers. > > In briefly reviewing previous discussions on this list and on usenet, > I've come across the suggestion to use DOS fdisk /mbr. I'm not sure > that this would work in the aforementioned scenario, and in any case, it > seems a bit lame to fall back on DOS in order to remedy a flaw in linux > software. > > Do a search through the usenet archives on google and you'll turn up a > gezillion posts asking how to remove grub. The standard replies are: > "Why would you want to?" and "Use DOS fdisk /mbr". Neither of these > replies will adequately resolve the problem outlined above. Could > someone suggest another solution??? > > It seems to me that it would be easy enough for someone familiar with > disk geometry (not me :-)) to add an argument to grub (--erase) > permitting grub to be cleanly removed from an MBR and a partition boot > record. Alternatively, 'dd' could probably do the trick. Could some > kind soul recommend the proper lengths and offsets? Comments? > Suggestions? > > -- > RD Lawrence > 504-443-5000 > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Bug-grub mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-grub > -- Mathieu Chouquet-Stringer E-Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is a proper judge of it. -- Oscar Wilde _______________________________________________ Bug-grub mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-grub