[GRLUG] Active Partitions

[Tim Schmidt]

On Dec 4, 2007 2:50 PM, Justin Denick <justin.denick at gmail.com> wrote:
> FWIW, I did not try GRUB. Grub is garbage.

Obviously, opinions differ.

> I installed the MBR onto /dev/sda1, because fdisk makes you select a
> partition to make active. Purist would argue that the MBR should only be
> installed onto /dev/sda, but I think that has to do with sector size and
> cylinder number issue that I feel are no longer pertinent today.

I'll assume by 'MBR' you mean the bootloader - LILO in this case.  The
MBR, being the a region of the disk (the first 512 bytes), can't be
'installed' onto one of the disk's partitions.  As far as installing
the bootloader in a partition, it's perfectly acceptable behavior -
especially in certain multi-boot configurations.  Sounds like, if
you'd installed the bootloader into the MBR, instead of a partition,
your BIOS may not have had an issue booting the drive (my brand-new
Intel board at home certainly doesn't).

--tim