[GRLUG] Active Partitions

[Michael Mol]

On Dec 4, 2007 7:00 PM, Tim Schmidt <timschmidt at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 4, 2007 3:31 PM, Justin Denick <justin.denick at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The MBR is a small program that is executed when a computer starts up
> > in order to find the operating system and load it into memory. It also
> > contains the partition table and other information needed by the BIOS
> > (basic input output system) to access the hard disk drive (HDD).
>
> Sorry.  The MBR isn't a program at all.  It's literally the region of
> a partitioned hard disk encompassing the first 512 bytes of that disk,
> and may contain any number of useful things (including programs) but a
> program it is not.  In other words, the MBR - being a very specific
> region of a disk - may contain the partition table for that disk, a
> bootloader (or other useful program - usually executed by the BIOS), a
> unique disk ID, etc.  See:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record

Sorry to be pedantic, but that bootloader is, itself, x86 machine
code; A small program.

Boot-sector viruses used to be impressive in that they managed to
replace the MBR with themselves while still accomplishing what the MBR
was supposed to do. (At least, on DOS systems.  I imagine if a boot
sector virus replaced your LILO MBR, you'd be SOL.)

>
> > I have now installed LILO onto the MBR, rather than onto the
> > [1]Partition and the machine boots fine.
>
> So after all that, I was right.
>
>
> --tim
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