[indiana-discuss] Partitions & grub

[Tim Bray]

On Nov 2, 2007, at 10:27 AM, Dave Miner wrote:

>> I used format/fdisk to make a new solaris partition and installed  
>> on  it, no problem.  But Grub doesn't see the other two bootable   
>> partitions, one XP and one Ubuntu.  I don't see anything under  
>> the  admin menus to address this.  Is this a bug?
>
> Someone might as well file it.  We generally can't do anything  
> sensible with the Linux partitions, since we can't look inside any  
> of the usual file systems they use for booting in order to figure  
> out what they are.  The code we have in Solaris which does find the  
> Windows partition and adds it to the GRUB menu wasn't something we  
> got around to including.

I actually figured what I think the right behavior should be last  
night while I was wrestling to get my MBR sorted out using a Ubuntu  
LiveCD.  Basically, fdisk will tell you what partitions you have, and  
enough label info about them to refresh your memory.  In the vast  
majority of cases, when you're in this situation, you know perfectly  
well which partitions you'd like to be made bootable.  So some piece  
of the install suite, in the case where there are multiple  
partitions, ought to pop up a list like fdisk's, with numbers, and  
say, "which of these do you want to appear in the boot menu, and  
which the default?".  Sure, if the user misremembers and marks a  
linux swap partition or some such for booting, then booting that will  
fail; big deal.  This would be much less irritating than the current  
situation. -Tim