Hi,
Tests of GRUB on NetBSD (and FreeBSD) have raised several issues (most
of them reported on the list) regarding partition detection. However,
I have the feeling that some of these issues are not considered as real
issues since the test configuration is not supported by GRUB. This
surprises me since I naively thought that most user configurations
should be supported.
So I ask the question: Which partitioning schemes are (or shall be)
supported by GRUB on i386-pc (with standard BIOS)?
To start the discussion, I'll focus on a few examples (the list is
surely not exhaustive). Maybe some configurations simply cannot exist,
in which case please let me know.
1. A single top-level partition map
(a) MS-DOS
(b) GPT
(c) BSD disklabel
(d) Apple partition map
(e) Sun label
2. Hybrid: top-level MS-DOS + another *top-level* partition map
(a) MS-DOS + GPT
(i.e. GPT + at-least one non 0xEE MS-DOS partition)
(b) MS-DOS + BSD
(c) ...
If I read the code correctly, grub-setup (on i386-pc) only supports
1(a) and 1(b). However, on NetBSD, 1(c) is very common, and 2(b) is
not rare. Also, some OSes are fine with 2(a), e.g. FreeBSD.
Personally, I would rather support all possible configurations, unless
some technical reason prevents it. So grub-setup would not test for
some specific configurations, but would instead use a generic
(and simple) approach. If it fails, it should be for a good reason,
and not because "No DOS-style partitions [were] found".
What's your opinion?
Grégoire
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