Some Windows Apps Make GRUB 2 Unbootable

KwahAG writes "Colin Watson, one of the Ubuntu developers, published in his blog information about Windows applications making GRUB 2 unbootable. Users of dual-boot Windows/Linux installations may face the problem, which boils down to particular Windows applications (Colin does not name them, but users point at least to HP ProtectTools, PC Angel, Adobe Flexnet) blindly overwriting hard disk content between the MBR and the first partition destroying information already stored there, in this particular case — the 'core image' of GRUB 2 (GRand Unified Bootloader) making the system unbootable."

Comments

Solution:

[The MAZZTer]

Don't run those apps as administrator. Administrator privileges are needed for raw disk access.

Re:Solution:

[The MAZZTer]

On reflection, the names of some of those apps sound like they would need admin privileges to be useful. Sigh. Though it might help if they don't.

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Or switch to LILO

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

There are programs that can run without administrator access?

Re:Solution:

[mattventura]

At least one of the apps mentioned in TFS (Flexnet) runs a service in the background, so running as a non-admin user would make no difference since the service is still privileged.

Re:Solution:

[EvanED]

A few years ago this would have been a much more fair question... now it's just troll/flamebait. I run as a limited user at both work and home, and for the most part it's installers and a couple other apps you'd expect which need admin rights.

(Even when Vista was new I kept a log of all the elevations I gave in a month or so, and with a couple exceptions (one of which has been since fixed and one of which was a stupid utility I didn't really need) they were basically on-par with what you'd need to 'sudo' to do in Linux.)

Re:Solution:

[mysidia]

This is not a problem for the most important Linux systems which are not dual boot.

Most systems that are dual boot are workstations, not servers. Meaning the person who uses the system every day is most likely using Linux.

I think the solution is for the Linux installer to create Windows icons and a Start menu item group with two things.... A "boot Linux" icon (for launching loadlin)

And a "fix grub" icon, for fixing grub, no matter what some dastardly windows program has done to it.

Re:Solution:

[Ephemeriis]

Don't run those apps as administrator. Administrator privileges are needed for raw disk access.

There are two problems with this.

The first one is that installing software generally requires elevation. And these apps could be doing their damage during install.

The second one is that if these apps need to be able to write to that section of the disk, they're going to ask for elevation. You'll either give them admin access, or you won't run them at all.

Re:Solution:

[jvillain]

Rather than dual boot just run windows out of a VM if you must run windows.

Re:Solution:

[Rakishi]

Yeah, because games sure do great in a VM.

Re:Solution:

[makomk]

Of course, Flexnet is apparently quite capable of making Windows unbootable too, at least if you're using TrueCrypt. Say no to badly-designed DRM!

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, article is somewhat trollish, all three apps listed are server apps, and who the fuck would dual boot a server?

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Are there VMs that offer the same (graphics) performance as native Windows? That's the only reason I still boot Windows.

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people dual-boot Windows for the native hardware acceleration, so you have that backwards: Linux should be inside the VM in that case.

Re:Solution:

[tinkerghost]

The second one is that if these apps need to be able to write to that section of the disk, they're going to ask for elevation.

OK, I can see AV software requiring raw disk access. I can't see why it would need to be able write to that section of the disk if there is no virus there.

Of the 3 programs listed, none are anti-virus. HP's software is for heavy duty keycard/usb dongle access to the computer - it might be trying to secure the bootstrap - however if that's what it's doing it should be replacing grub not just writing to the disk.

PC Angel is backup/recovery software ... WTF does it need raw disk access? It's not like your computer is accidentally going to be writing files outside the partition.

Adobe's netflex is their DRM. It's obvious why they want to write their information outside the partition - to make it harder to discover & alter - but I'll tell you that if I found a program doing that - I'd yank it off of any network I was running. You want to run on my networks, you color within the lines. I'm not wasting my time hunting down why a chunk of software is writing where it's going to be hard for my AV software to check it, I'm yanking it & tossing it in the trash.

Yeah, just a great idea to toss your proprietary code chunks into random places on the hard drive that 'nobody uses anyway'. It's a file system for a reason.

Unfortunately, the only company that's going to get any flak over this is Adobe. People are going to get work stations with the HP software installed & installing the netflex software will break it. Once that happens, Adobe will get called by "big important companies" and bitched at. HP & PC angel will merrily go on their way with only a few 'fringe crackpots' having an issue with their software.

Re:Solution:

[KDR_11k]

If you want games then do it the other way around, Windows as the main OS, Linux in the VM.

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Except without the running Linux in a VM part.

Re:Solution:

[Jeremy Erwin]

I think it's entirely appropriate that DRM interferes with the Linux bootloader. Linux promotes the dangerous idea that it is possible to obtain software for free, and this may lead to piracy.

Re:Solution:

[Beelzebud]

Or how about I continue to dual-boot, and use my PC the way I want to?

Re:Solution:

[jedidiah]

> Or how about I continue to dual-boot, and use my PC the way I want to?

You know the drill. Microsoft isn't going to cooperate with that. Now it seems so of their stooges will also "help".

Re:Solution:

[cgenman]

If I'm not mistaken, Flex is required for Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, InDesign, and After Effects. Except for After Effects, you won't find any real professional-level alternatives for any of them.

Try telling upper management that you banned your $100 an hour designers, artists, and developers from the tools they need to do their jobs, because you were worried about bootloader compatibility and proper code behaviors.

Re:Solution:

[Drinking Bleach]

Obviously no software that is legally free is available on Windows as well, right? How much did you pay for Firefox again?

Re:Solution:

[ChrisMaple]

I tried loadlin once. It made Windows unbootable.

Re:Solution:

[jedidiah]

> Yea, article is somewhat trollish, all three apps listed are server apps, and who the fuck would dual boot a server?

In a "grown up" OS, the server apps don't run as Administrator.

Re:Solution:

[Yaa 101]

Say no to any DRM'd shit!

Re:Solution:

[Jeremy Erwin]

I'm not sure. It was included with my copy of ZeuS Builder Kit.

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Developers who have a copy of the server installed for testing purposes.

Re:Solution:

[ushering05401]

This was covered in 2600 a couple issues ago. IIRC there was even a workaround script. This is kid stuff.

Stooges have nothing to do with it. The paradigm in the other world is for users to suck a cock unti they get a clue and change ecosystems. They don't want the people that don't suck cock, that should be clear by now.

Re:Solution:

[micheas]

Are there VMs that offer the same (graphics) performance as native Windows? That's the only reason I still boot Windows.

Probably not until xorg and the linux kernel get decent 3d support for ati or nvidia. (decent meaning at least as fast the closed source drivers for a large subset of openGL and fully implements all the 3d functions of the closed source drivers.)

I would guess that until the opensource drivers happen, nobody is going to have enough documentation about what the commonalities are across video drivers to create a virtual video driver.

Although, I guess you might be able to pass a direct draw to full screen virtual terminal. The problems with this make me guess that it would be simpler to just go the natural path of writing the opensource video drivers, and then create a virtual video card that uses the unified video code.

The virtualized video should be slower than the unvirtualized video, but it should be able to get within 10-20% which can be compensated for buying a faster video card.

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Gimp as a Photoshop replacement?

Re:Solution:

[ZosX]

Since when do designers make $100/hr? If that's the case, I'm working at the wrong place. :P

Re:Solution:

[AvitarX]

Isn't there a real risk of all these applications using the "unused" space stepping on each others toes and all breaking?

It just sounds like a bad idea.

Re:Solution:

[rdnetto]

What if you want games on both? This would be especially true if you do any kind of cross-platform development.
Plus, if you share a computer with others it's often not feasible to require them to startup a VM to use Windows.
The main reason my system dual boots Windows is as a backup - if I need Linux functionality or my Windows installation is screwed up, then I can use Linux instead. Windows is still the primary OS, so dual booting is still the best choice.

Re:Solution:

[Alex Belits]

Virtualization is the last refuge of a horrendously mis-engineered operating system.

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody can write apps that require admin privileges on any OS. Its upto the user to choose whether to purchase/install them or not. But please, don't let facts or logic get in the way of your anti-ms trolling. Carry on.. its quite amusing to see the disconnect from reality.

Re:Solution:

[Alex Belits]

Or, better, don't.

Linux is not meant to run under Windows. If you want to run Windows, by all means run Windows and don't waste anyone else's time.

Re:Solution:

[Alex Belits]

Since Microsoft marketing people started posting bullshit on all bulletin boards and discussion sites where Linux is mentioned.

You should see the crap they do on /g/.

Re:Solution:

[Bing Tsher E]

In an era of really inexpensive hardware and KVM switches, I can't see a reason to ever dual boot.

Re:Solution:

[Bing Tsher E]

Total cost, including overhead, almost certainly exceeds $100/hour.

It's about the apps, not the politics. Dorky zealots will never understand that. But since this is home for them, I guess they'll have their way here.

Re:Solution:

[scrib]

If GRUB gets corrupted, you can't boot Windows either... However, reinstalling GRUB should work. Keep that LiveCD install disc around!

As for the "most important Linux machine," to me it's the one I'm running with all my personal (and some professional) data.

Re:Solution:

[batkiwi]

So how does apache open port 80 then?

Re:Solution:

[ozmanjusri]

Sounds like it solved a lot of problems then?

Re:Solution:

[dkf]

Total cost, including overhead, almost certainly exceeds $100/hour.

That depends critically on how you account for it since working out what overheads there are and dealing with all the other factors such as dual use systems... Maybe it's correct, maybe not, but accounting typically has big fudge factors in it (e.g., over what timescale do you make some capital cost depreciate? In general, that's a parameter you get to pick and it makes a huge difference.)

Re:Solution:

[TheTurtlesMoves]

We can't that here now. /. group think likes steam, but since its also DRM, we now have to modify the statement to "badly designed DRM". ;)

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Try do preprint CMYK color separation to sent to printing system. Try to open CMYK image. ;)

No CMYK, no replacement for Photoshop. Unfortunately.

Also, lots of Photoshop users find GIMP interface clumsy and unusable. Although I disagree with them -- another interface is a big hit to productivity. Remember New Ribbon. :)

Re:Solution:

[micheas]

Virtualization is the last refuge of a horrendously mis-engineered operating system.

That didn't come out like you intended.

I thought that you were taking the Micro Kernels rule and all those bloated monolithic kernel operating systems like Linux and Windows should die, then I read your other posts and realized what you were trying to say.

Re:Solution:

[Alioth]

Actually, games do fine in a VM. I'm not a Linux desktop user, rather a Mac desktop user. However, on the few occasions I want to play Windows games they run fine under Parallels Desktop (including first person shooters). However, fortunately, most of the games I like run on the Mac too so it's not something I need to do all the time. Infinitely better than dual booting though.

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

$100 an hour? Is that in East Carribean dollars?

Re:Solution:

[Vahokif]

This looks like an intentional, if misguided feature of these programs. It's not like they run as Administrator by default and mess up your stuff without any input from you.

Re:Solution:

[JamesP]

Pro-tip: buy a Mac for the designers

Problem solved

Re:Solution:

[ScrewMaster]

This looks like an intentional, if misguided feature of these programs. It's not like they run as Administrator by default and mess up your stuff without any input from you.

It sounds like they just want to get rid of any code that they don't recognize as being part of the MBR. Not unreasonable if you're just running a pure Windows system, I suppose. The misguided part is assuming that anything there must be a boot-sector infector and not asking if the user is in a multiboot configuration (or better yet, checking first for legitimate alternate boot loaders.) I can't believe the developers didn't realize that something like Grub exists, but I imagine the higher-ups figured it wasn't worth the development time to do anything more sophisticated.

This is the reason why I generally multiboot from different physical drives (usually removable: you don't have to worry about anything being overwritten if you simply swap the boot drive.) It's not like hard disks are particularly expensive anymore, and if all you need is enough space to boot the OS it's not a big deal.

Re:Solution:

[ScrewMaster]

We can't that here now. /. group think likes steam, but since its also DRM, we now have to modify the statement to "badly designed DRM". ;)

I don't know as we "like" Steam: DRM is DRM and DRM sucks, period. It's just that Valve is pretty up front about what Steam is ... and isn't. Frankly, I'd say Steam is more "well-designed DRM", so far as such a thing is possible. To date they've been running things about as well as can be expected from such a system. That may change if there's ever a change of heart at Valve, in which case their customer base will rise as one and slay them with virtual pitchforks..

Re:Solution:

[ScrewMaster]

I think it's entirely appropriate that DRM interferes with the Linux bootloader. Linux promotes the dangerous idea that it is possible to obtain software for free, and this may lead to piracy.

Obviously no software that is legally free is available on Windows as well, right? How much did you pay for Firefox again?

Quickly, DB, activate your humor/satire detection subsystem. That applies to the mods as well.

Re:Solution:

[ScrewMaster]

No CMYK, no replacement for Photoshop. Unfortunately.

Never fear, he was trying to be funny.

Although I disagree with them -- another interface is a big hit to productivity.

I agree.

Remember New Ribbon. :)

Trying not to.

Re:Solution:

[Lord Byron II]

Fine. I have a $800 desktop of which I use the full functionality in both Windows and Linux. Please send me a check for $800 + the cost of a KVM switch (the KVM must include the switching of three monitors, multiple USB devices, and sound) and I'll adopt your solution.

Re:Solution:

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Oh i agree, but look at any steam story and a lot of post here are backing up how awesome steam is.

Re:Solution:

[cgenman]

The rule-of-thumb I've heard from business associates is that overhead accounts for 2-3 times the cost of salary. This includes real estate, equipment, health care, taxes, managerial overhead, etc. A designer that is being a bit underpaid at $25 an hour is actually running the company between $75 and $100 an hour total.

Re:Solution:

[ScrewMaster]

Oh i agree, but look at any steam story and a lot of post here are backing up how awesome steam is.

Well, Steam is pretty awesome from a functional point of view. On the other hand, when Steam makes the inevitable misstep, you'll find those same users screaming bloody murder. What I think you're saying (and if so, I agree) is that users are glossing over the underlying reality of Valve's content distribution system in favor of its "coolness". Much the same as Apple users do with iTunes and Fairplay, I'd say ... yeah, they're cool, but you should think about who and what you have to thank for them.

Re:Solution:

[DMiax]

If those machines are dedicated to people that require windows-only software why are they dual-booting?

Re:Solution:

[hairyfeet]

I thought on of the big selling points of Linux was how great it ran on older hardware? On most Craigslists there are P4s in the 2.4Ghz-3.4Ghz with an average of 1Gb of RAM for around $70. Pick up one of those cheap Trendnet KVM switches (have sold quite a few, for dual switching they work just fine) and you have a viable solution for under $95. And as an added bonus while the Windows box is busy doing one task you can switch over to the Linux box which will have all its resources free and raring to go.

Re:Solution:

[internewt]

What do you expect? Most of the people advocating Steam will have probably spent quite a bit of money through the thing. They don't want to think they have wasted, or even risked, their time and money on a something that has the ability to whip away their purchases at a moment's notice (I dunno if Steam can do this, but that's generally what DRM does when it decides the user isn't authorised, or goes wrong).

I once had a big argument with a guy who was convinced that whilst software frequently has bugs, DRM mechanisms didn't. Pointing out that DRM mechanisms routinely get by passed, due to their bugs, didn't matter. He was convinced that copy protection mechanisms work, and he must have been convinced by PR, advertising, or anecdotes on the internet from fanboys. Or the desire not to have to face the fact he had paid for products with the ability to break themselves.

Buyer's remorse is unpleasant, and people will go to quite some lengths to avoid the possibility of it.

Re:Solution:

[Raenex]

it's installers and a couple other apps you'd expect which need admin rights.

Don't you think it's a problem that the installer for an application needs admin rights? You're giving admin rights to application code, even if it is "just" for the install.

Re:Solution:

[tenco]

Truecrypt 5.0 is fairly old. Does 7.0 disk encryption (for newly created ones with 7.0) still have this issue?

Re:Solution:

[squirrl]

Doom runs fine in a browser but the point is modern first person shooters don't run well in a VM. Mass Effect 2 is not running well in your VM.

Re:Solution:

[scribblej]

$100 an hour? Where can I apply?

Re:Solution:

[BrokenHalo]

Or switch to LILO

You insensitive clod. Some of us never switched from LILO in the first place...

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

VirtualBox has (experimental) 3d acceleration support, and I've had a pretty good experience running games from wine.

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=incompatibilities

Re:Solution:

[TheRealGrogan]

I still use LILO on my workstations... I hate Grub and especially Grub 2. LILO is simple, file system agnostic and has no choice but to work. Of course the only thing is that it needs to be reconfigured and reinstated when you change your kernel, but it's simple enough to do even if you have to boot with other media and chroot (it doesn't need /proc or anything, so you don't need to worry about mounting that first in the chroot environment. It will simply skip the partition check)

That autoconfiguring Grub 2 in *buntu is a good idea for most users, but it leaves something to be desired. (It's only good when it works. I have it on my netbook, and I have to manually edit the grub.cfg file anyway, because it gets my Windows boot entry wrong)

As for it using that "embedding area", as already said, I too believe that they are just as guilty of arbitrarily doing unexpected things, as that foul adobe DRM.

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

The GP said "you won't find any real professional-level alternatives for any of them". I like GIMP as much as the next guy, but let's be honest, it's not as powerful as Photoshop.

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

GIMP won't be a photoshop competitor until 2.8 is released *AND* they change the name to something people can take seriously. Personally I think Canonical should rebrand GIMP in ubuntu repos as something sane and keep their own brand until the developers can think of something that doesn't completely suck. The day they do, I'll call it by the name Canonical gives it until a proper solution for this problem is implemented.

Re:Solution:

[danielpauldavis]

Very much you have a God and your ignoring the evidence never means He is ignoring you.

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh i agree, but look at any steam story and a lot of post here are backing up how awesome steam is.

Oh, you innocent!. A lot of it is astroturf.

No rational consumer is going to support DRM because the whole point of DRM is to restrict what a consumer can do.

Re:Solution:

[introp]

Run it as a normal user, bind to port N (where N is >= 1024), and use iptables to forward the ports 80 to port N. It is common enough that a quick Google search will show you exactly how.

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn straight. The GIMP caught and passed Photoshop in terms of real world capabilities a couple of years ago, and it's currently headed for a "major version number" upgrade. Pardon me while I break down and cry at the injustice of this situation - people who paid for certificates that say they are qualified to use "the only" software in the world, are running into competition from people whose only qualification is that they happen to be very good at editing images. Over the last five years, I have seen U.S. print shops drop their "Adobe format or fuck you" attitude toward customers, and that's just wrong, right?

Re:Solution:

[Whatanut]

And 'sudo make install' is entirely unheard of....

Re:Solution:

[Raenex]

Or even 'sudo apt install'. Yes, it's the same problem. Linux doesn't do much better (there are some bonus points for having a repository of open source software).

Re:Solution:

[djdanlib]

If Windows crashes, the VM goes down with it. Then, since it's actually crashing, the VM has no chance to save its state, so you've effectively crashed two machines with one bad operation. So it makes more sense to NOT run Linux in a VM. The moral of the story is: Don't run VMs under an OS where you're also performing other tasks - it tends to get messy!

Re:Solution:

[spitzak]

Exactly, this is the same problem. Also the Linux repository installers work as root too.

Even OS/X does not get it really right. Yes the installers work without root, but only because they hacked the system so that /Applications is writable by the user (though you can't replace any files so you can only *add* software). I would still see that as a big security hole.

Re:Solution:

[toddestan]

What makes you think that Adobe's DRM is any less draconian on the Mac?

Re:Solution:

[batkiwi]

-using IPTables requires root
-apache does NOT do this. Apache starts as root and then forks off after opening the port. It was a rhetorical question, though, as a part of apache runs as "administrator" (root) and from jedidiah's post that makes Linux not included in "grown up" OS.

Re:Solution:

[V!NCENT]

Mass Effect... *facepalm*

What's up with the new generation of gam- interactive movie enthusiast?

Mass Effect is not a game.

I thought nothing was supposed to be there

[guruevi]

... and that's the reason why BIOS 'virus protection' blocks access to that portion of the hard drive. Too bad that DRM breaks everything once again and too bad the mainstream of users isn't affected by it.

Re:I thought nothing was supposed to be there

[mysidia]

Nothing is supposed to be there except the user-installed system boot code, boot data, and hard drive parameters.

Third party software certainly has no business messing with Sector 0 or the boot blocks unless it gets explicit permission, advises users of the risks in messing with the boot block, prompts the user to back anything up that's there right now, and writes its bits only to the portion of the boot block that is provided for its required purpose.

It may detect bootloaders, and update their configuration, if the user accepts that, but bootloader configuration is generally stored on the boot volume not the boot block

Re:I thought nothing was supposed to be there

[FuckingNickName]

The "boot block" is precisely one sector right at the start of the fixed disk, with some space being taken up by the primary partition table, signature, etc. The problem is not Grub (and certain Windows software) writing to this area, but writing to unpartitioned space elsewhere on the drive.

This is as wrong as looking at some filesystem, discovering that certain free blocks are unlikely to be allocated, and then using that space for storage.

Re:I thought nothing was supposed to be there

[X0563511]

... and so why is Adobe or anyone else not working with raw disk access fucking around with said space?

Re:I thought nothing was supposed to be there

[FuckingNickName]

Well, some deployment software explicitly zeroes out unpartitioned space. That makes sense.

But I don't think flexlm or whatever it's called today has any business there.

Sometimes it takes badly behaving software to expose faults with other software.

Re:I thought nothing was supposed to be there

[leuk_he]

... And so why is grub doing there when there is not supposed to be anything there? Grub has no more rights to use that space than some fucking DRM app.

Re:I thought nothing was supposed to be there

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this classic virus behaviour?

Re:I thought nothing was supposed to be there

[koiransuklaa]

FLEXlm? Good god, how can they still be in business? When I read the summary I wondered who could be such idiots but this makes perfect sense: the people behind FLEXlm would definitely be capable of that.

That application is a perfect example of a DRM system (it's a software license managament server) that drives people to copyright infringement: it can make the lives of honest people so much worse that using a crack was seriously considered in my organization even though we had a licence for every copy of the ESRI software that used FLEXlm... The best example (and I have loads) of their engineering skill was the handling of a specific error situation in the server: every time this specific error occurred, it opened a dialog -- yes, it did that on the server and yes, it was a new dialog every time the error occured. The amount of dialogs would in the end grind the Windows server to a halt, even remotely connecting was sometimes impossible. Brilliant.

HP ProtectTools

[Nemyst]

Protecting your laptop from open source commies. And maybe viruses.

Re:HP ProtectTools

[Joebert]

I'll just leave this here.
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Operating-systems-and-software/New-laptop-harddrive-non-OEM-Vista-disk/m-p/314927

Re:HP ProtectTools

[hcmtnbiker]

I can assure you that the HP G60 mentioned in this article can boot a regular Vista Disc. And I can assure you that the key on the bottom of the notebook can be used to activate that copy of windows once installed. All of the OEM's have a special copy with all the drivers pre-installed and usually all the trial-ware and bullshit they like to put on them and those discs are model-locked, so an HP G60 model-locked disc doesn't work with an HP G62 or any other vendor's PC. However a generic disc can still be used. If they bundled an "Anytime Upgrade" disc with the PC you can use that, the AU discs are literally normal Vista(x86 only) discs. Otherwise it sounds like a bad optical, try to boot Ubuntu or something else and see if that works.

Re:HP ProtectTools

[janwedekind]

I had to delete backup partitions (and make a backup on another hard disk) to install GNU/Linux. Then I decided that I don't need the HP backup tools any more. The deinstaller of the HP backup tools removes GRUB from the MBR and puts back the Windows Bootloader.

Re:HP ProtectTools

[coerciblegerm]

I can assure you that the HP G60 mentioned in this article can boot a regular Vista Disc. And I can assure you that the key on the bottom of the notebook can be used to activate that copy of windows once installed.

Obviously you've never owned a G60. These things get extremely hot (specifically the GPU) which often translates into the key on that sticker being rendered unreadable, as it has on mine and others I know who own this model. Luckily for me, I made a note of my Windows key. Others might not have been as paranoid as I in doing so.

Re:HP ProtectTools

[Joebert]

Considering the laptop isn't mine, it hadn't donned on me to try booting Ubuntu until right as I was waking up this morning. Thanks for suggesting it, I forgot once I got up and moving around. =)
A Ubuntu 9.04 32-bit OS disk I had laying around has the machine starting right up, it went straight to the language selection screen.

Re:HP ProtectTools

[Joebert]

Luckily the license key on the bottom of this particular laptop is immaculate. =)

Re:HP ProtectTools

[drinkypoo]

When you buy HP, you're buying from SATAN. It's really sad because there are so many "good" deals on HP hardware out there... ever wonder why their year-old refurb laptops are 50% cheaper than everyone else's? Don't wonder. They are all shit.

Re:HP ProtectTools

[ScrewMaster]

When you buy HP, you're buying from SATAN. It's really sad because there are so many "good" deals on HP hardware out there... ever wonder why their year-old refurb laptops are 50% cheaper than everyone else's? Don't wonder. They are all shit.

No shit. Although, truth be told (having been inside a lot of laptops over the years) about the only laptops that aren't shit are the older Thinkpads, those from the IBM days. Build quality was truly remarkable. Oh, Toughbooks are pretty damn solid too, although you in both cases you pay a substantial premium.

Re:HP ProtectTools

[Anonymous Coward]

Judge: Mr Hurd, did you have sexual relations with that woman?

Hurd: No your honour, I just noticed she had some unallocated space in her mouth so I decided to store my dick in there.

Re:HP ProtectTools

[wastedlife]

Try burning the Ubuntu disk to a DVD instead of a CD, and see if it still boots. I've had drives where either the CD or the DVD portion goes bad and was able to use the other. In fact, my little server behind my desk has the opposite problem, can read DVDs but CDs fail. Vista disks are usually DVDs, never seen a CD version but it is probably possible. Try n-lite (or whatever the vista version of that is) to see if it will split the disk into multiple CDs.

Re:HP ProtectTools

[jd]

I beg to differ. A lot of people found SATAN, and recent derivatives, very useful.

Re:HP ProtectTools

[Anonymous Coward]

The current thinkpads aren't like the tanks they used to be, but I still think they're above just about anything else. I have to admit that I only have experience with the X-series and I have heard other people complain about their T models -- possibly the even more substantial premium* in X-series means better builds?

*) the prices are pretty hard to swallow: A basic x201s (no SSD, no dock, small battery) is 2500€ in my local shop (in Helsinki).

HP ProtectTools, PC Angel, Adobe Flexnet

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone smart enough to run GRUB wouldn't usually be running HP ProtectTools or PC Angel. Adobe Flexnet DRM is another issue entirely.

Re:HP ProtectTools, PC Angel, Adobe Flexnet

[0123456]

Adobe Flexnet DRM is another issue entirely.

Anyone smart enough to run Grub probably knows better than to run Adobe software of any kind. Except, perhaps, for Flash with appropriate Apparmor or SELinux protections for the inevitable security exploits as it's so hard to avoid.

Re:HP ProtectTools, PC Angel, Adobe Flexnet

[scrib]

... or an HP ...
(Just kidding HP, my laptop is a still-going-strong, dual-booting HP L2000.)

Re:HP ProtectTools, PC Angel, Adobe Flexnet

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, perhaps, for Flash with appropriate Apparmor or SELinux protections for the inevitable security exploits as it's so hard to avoid.

Thats totally what my grandma does..

Re:HP ProtectTools, PC Angel, Adobe Flexnet

[dinker]

This PC is triple boot: XP Pro, Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04 - Adobe CS4 and CS5 are installed on the Windows partitions and I`ve never experienced any problems. Putting Grub 2 on the Linux partition and using EasyBCD seems to fix this problem.

WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is this "embedding area?" It sound like GRUB is misusing the disk geometry to find unused space and then getting upset that other programs do that too.

Googling for "embedding area" find that it's a term that GRUB 2 made up and that it's not really a part of anything. In fact, apparently this space doesn't even exist under EFI systems, and that this "embedding area" is an artifact from DOS.

So, basically, GRUB is misusing the disk to store information in a place it has no right to be touching, and then getting upset that other people make the same mistake. Genius.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Spazmania]

It makes sense for a bootloader to place data and code outside of partitioned space. It makes more sense to place the code inside a partition, even if it's a one-track partition dedicated to the bootloader. If they collided with components of Windows' bootloader or FreeBSD's bootloader, or some pre-boot hard disk encryption software I'd have little sympathy for them.

On the other hand, user-level apps storing data on the hard disk outside of partitioned space is very bad mojo. They should not be doing that. Ever. Period.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[FuckingNickName]

Bingo. It is absolutely wrong to put data outside of partitioned space, and it is insane to blame something else for your own bug. Indeed, one security measure when installing a new system might be to zero out all unpartitioned space and then make sure nothing is ever written to it - Grub makes this impossible.

Grub should use an existing partition to store all the bits which don't fit inside the MBR, following the lead of EFI system partitions if necessary but supporting various common filesystems otherwise. Instead they use an atrocious hack to try to make things look neat.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[John Hasler]

Grub should use an existing partition to store all the bits which don't fit inside the MBR...

We call that LILO.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Sir_Sri]

which goes to the question of whether or not some of these programs really count as user level. Is anti virus user level? Well it can be, but what about one that blocks rootkits? What about one that is trying do something crazy related to virtualization? What if HP just assumes you're either too stupid to use unbuntu on your computer or are smart enough to not use their terrible software anyway?

PC angel and HP protect conceivably live outside the OS level, well actually they do basically the same thing GRUB does, which is allow you to boot into another OS. They just aren't full blown OS's (PC angel is disk imaging, HP protect is I think aiming to be security before the OS layer). I don't think i've ever used adobe flex, but I can't see why a web creation suite is is writing outside a normal partition. Note: I'm guessing at how HP protect works, but some of their security solutions could conceivably live outside the OS, whether that's a good idea or not is another matter, but they might have a legitimate reason for doing it that way.

if it's a problem of everyone trying to solve the same problem in basically the same way (trying to stick bootloaders all in the same place) it might be a big political win for GRUB, to justifiably create some actual standards so all the OS guys use the same bootloader locations, with their boot info in a standard format so they can all work at once. Though adobe in this one looks like they deserve to be slapped around a bit, if the conjecture is accurate.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[alexhs]

It's also called "GRUB with blocklists"

You can find more here,
and in my other post

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[FuckingNickName]

Wait wait wait, I have to specify the specific blocks to load now? And
grub-setup: warn: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and its use is discouraged.
grub-setup: error: If you really want blocklists, use --force. ...?

I've written a toy partition bootloader over a weekend which was able in around 400 bytes to load and execute any file on a FAT filesystem. And another for the MBR gave a menu of primary and extended partitions for keyboard selection. What is the Grub project finding so difficult?

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[0123456]

It makes sense for a bootloader to place data and code outside of partitioned space. It makes more sense to place the code inside a partition, even if it's a one-track partition dedicated to the bootloader.

It would, if you could actually get more than four partitions on a hard drive with the 90+% of BIOSes which can't boot properly from a GPT drive.

My new laptop came with _THREE_ recovery partitions and a Windows partition, so I had to delete one of the recovery partitions to be able to install Linux at all... where would I get another partition for Grub to run from without deleting all the recovery data?

So the big problem is that we're still stuck with shitty MS-DOS disk formats from the 1980s.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[MBCook]

If it's wrong to put data outside of partitioned space, what are these user spaces apps doing writing there? I can see a pretty good case for boot loaders doing this (the comment below about the 4 partition limit is one). Why is a copyright/licensing program writing there (which is what Flexnet seems to be)?

What's to prevent one of these programs from overwriting the data another makes? How would you like it if every time you ran NewSuperGameWithDRM, Photoshop lost it's license and forced you to phone home to reconfirm it?

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[0123456]

What is the Grub project finding so difficult?

Could it be something to do with the fact that people aren't booting from FAT filesystems?

You might find that ext3, ext4, btrfs, XFS, ZFS and other Unix filesystems might perhaps be a little more complex to read than FAT, particularly if you have to support all of them.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Aredridel]

There's a long history of boot loaders living there: Systems that treat "slice 2" as the whole disk typically use it for just that: Storing boot information outside the other partitions.

And, ultimately, OS components are allowed to touch that and applications in general should not.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[FuckingNickName]

There is not a 4 partition limit. MBR allows infinite partitions (space-permitting) within the extended partition - even more than GPT, in theory.

And there is no reason you can't boot from a logical partition - it's just a problem for Windows because of the way it computes distances from the start of extended partition vs whole disk, and that can be fixed by fiddling with the boot sector for the partition.

What's to prevent one of these programs from overwriting the data another makes?

Nothing should be doing it. But what's happening here is some badly behaving Windows program exposing a fault in Grub. The article title is misleading.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[flimflammer]

There is really no good case for any program of any nature to write data into unpartitioned space. GRUB basically called dibs on the space and gave it their own flashy name (never heard of "embedding area"). Now that other programs are nulling out the space as it should not contain data, they're crying foul. GRUB should be placing the data it can't fit on the MBR into an existing partition, not mucking up unpartitioned space on the disk.

For situations like PC Angel doing this, PC Angel is designed to restore your machine back to the state it was in when you first obtained it. It makes complete sense for things like GRUB and its rogue data sitting in unpartitioned space to be overwritten when that happens

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[FuckingNickName]

Could it be something to do with the fact that people aren't booting from FAT filesystems?

So what's wrong with a FAT system partition? And, no, you don't need to boot from a primary partition. As a bonus, you can manipulate your boot settings just by fiddling with files in the regular filesystem in the regular partition.

particularly if you have to support all of them.

You only need to do initial boot from one filesystem, and you only need to install support for bootloading from that filesystem.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[flimflammer]

I forgot to add that I know some applications are writing their own data in there just as GRUB is and it sounded like I implied they were all doing the "right" thing to clear it out, but they have just as much "right" (as far as I'm concerned, that means no right) to do it as GRUB does. No applications should be doing it, but GRUB can't really cry foul that others are doing the same thing they are.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[cgenman]

On the other hand, user-level apps storing data on the hard disk outside of partitioned space is very bad mojo. They should not be doing that. Ever. Period.

How do they avoid stomping on eachother?

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[cgenman]

A great case can be made that the modern implementation of partitioning and bootloading is hideously outdated. And this is one area where we seem to be paralyzed by existing implementations.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[couchslug]

"where would I get another partition for Grub to run from without deleting all the recovery data?"

I just make recovery media and blow the old partitions away.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Drinking Bleach]

LVM is the solution to that -- though it's only on Linux and NetBSD so far and Windows has little chance of ever getting native support.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[alexhs]

Wait wait wait, I have to specify the specific blocks to load now?

No you don't. GRUB will compute the blocks and store them in the MBR. It's "unreliable" because if the file to be loaded is physically moved/modified, the loader will be broken.

I've written a toy partition bootloader over a weekend which was able in around 400 bytes to load and execute any file on a FAT filesystem.

I bet you mean that you wrote a program to which you gave the path of a COM file that would in turn write the MBR so it would load and execute that file. And it happened to work with your BIOS and the files you tried it with (did you try with files physically located after 8GiB ? on an old broken BIOS ?)
So what ? That's basically what LILO and GRUB stage 1 are doing.

And another for the MBR gave a menu of primary and extended partitions for keyboard selection.

Basically what the Debian mbr package does. That's chain-loading. (Could you really boot an extended partition ?)

What is the Grub project finding so difficult?

Go read the documention to get what features GRUB1 and GRUB2 have.
GRUB is a shell, understand many filesystems, can boot a variety of OS (many of which are requiring multiple files being loaded at specific addresses), from a variety of devices (including netboot), does switch to protected mode, and much more.
It happens that all these features are not fitting in the at most 446 bytes available in the MBR.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Drinking Bleach]

What's wrong with FAT? Pretty much everything from space inefficiency to lack of permissions to filename restrictions to reliability issues, especially after unclean shutdowns.

Also GRUB's core.img already only supports one filesystem -- whichever one is /boot (which can be FAT, GRUB can do that as well), filesystem modules for other types if necessary are loaded directly from said /boot partition.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[FuckingNickName]

What's wrong with FAT? Pretty much everything from space inefficiency to lack of permissions to filename restrictions to reliability issues, especially after unclean shutdowns.

Why does your bootloader partition need to concern itself with space efficiency, permissions and filename restrictions? And why are you not doing synchronous writes to critical areas, ordered such that no single sector write will corrupt a file? I doubt Grub replays the journal before boot, so journaling won't help.

Finally, please explain why a non-standard storage in unpartitioned space solves any of the listed problems.

Put another way, explain why EFI is wrong to use FAT and say what should have been done.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[FuckingNickName]

No you don't. GRUB will compute the blocks and store them in the MBR. It's "unreliable" because if the file to be loaded is physically moved/modified, the loader will be broken.

I wasn't imagining that I was forced to manually type out a list of blocks occupied by the file. But I was concerned by exactly what you say. Dear God, why do it like that?

I bet you mean that you wrote a program to which you gave the path of a COM file that would in turn write the MBR so it would load and execute that file.

The MBR did the boot menu and loaded the boot sector from any given partition. That boot sector would do as you say. You don't need to "bet" - it's pretty much what I said :-).

And it happened to work with your BIOS and the files you tried it with

Well, it happened to work on half a dozen machines built over the past 12 years and every VM I tried it on.

did you try with files physically located after 8GiB ?

Yes. This isn't 1995 any more. INT 13 extensions are supported.

on an old broken BIOS ?)

Probably not. What kind of old and broken are you contemplating?

So what ? That's basically what LILO and GRUB stage 1 are doing.

Really? So why does GRUB need any extra-partition space?

Could you really boot an extended partition ?

Why wouldn't you be able to retrieve the boot sector of an extended partition? Obviously some operating systems (Windows) will assume they're booting off a primary partition and break unless their boot sector is tweaked, but this isn't inevitable.

GRUB is a shell, understand many filesystems, can boot a variety of OS (many of which are requiring multiple files being loaded at specific addresses), from a variety of devices (including netboot), does switch to protected mode, and much more.
It happens that all these features are not fitting in the at most 446 bytes available in the MBR.

Which is why it should load a second stage from a system or other partition.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[transami]

How do you propose to handle booting multiple OSs then?

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[vadim_t]

I wasn't imagining that I was forced to manually type out a list of blocks occupied by the file. But I was concerned by exactly what you say. Dear God, why do it like that?

It's the same thing LILO did, which is why most people use Grub now.

And the reason why is because the MBR is tiny, and has no room for code that reads say, ext4.

The MBR did the boot menu and loaded the boot sector from any given partition. That boot sector would do as you say. You don't need to "bet" - it's pretty much what I said :-).

The MBR has no menu. The basic stuff is "find active partition, load first sector, jump to it". With Grub it's more like "load code from embedding area, run it". Which contains enough to read things like ext4 to load the rest.

Really? So why does GRUB need any extra-partition space?

Because there's no room for filesystem reading code in the MBR. Especially not for reading all the formats Linux supports at once (what if you want to boot from FAT, ext3 and zfs?)

If you're thinking grub should load the code from some fixed space in the Linux partition, then every single FS would have to agree to reserve that space. Including the ones like JFS that come from elsewhere.

Why wouldn't you be able to retrieve the boot sector of an extended partition? Obviously some operating systems (Windows) will assume they're booting off a primary partition and break unless their boot sector is tweaked, but this isn't inevitable.

In my understanding, a partition having a boot sector is a DOS convention, that other filesystems don't necessarily follow. I think 512 bytes at the start may be mostly guaranteed, but again, you're not going to read things like reiserfs in that little space, so you're back to having the same problem.

Which is why it should load a second stage from a system or other partition.

It can't read it from "other partition" because if there is a filesystem there, it has to understand it, and 446 bytes is not enough.

If you mean a special, reserved partition, then that reduces the number of primary partitions for other purposes to 3, which creates compatibility issues. And if there are 4 primary ones already, you're screwed.

Resuming: the way x86 computers boot sucks, and boot loaders have to be written with those constraints in mind. The whole "embedding area" is a horrible hack, but the alternatives have significant issues as well.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[fast turtle]

It's absolutely incorrect for any app other then Encryption/AV to have raw disk access under windows. Any app that does have raw disk access that shouldn't, has the posibility of fragging the OS itself (Virus/Malware) and MS should nail their asses to the ground and prevent them from doing it anymore.

To my thinking, the OS is supposed to provide access to all of the hardware and nothing should be able to access things in the Raw without being heavilly vetted by the OS itself. Otherwise, your asking for trouble as we're seeing from Adobe and other products.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[FuckingNickName]

And the reason why is because the MBR is tiny, and has no room for code that reads say, ext4.

The MBR doesn't need to read a filesystem. It's good enough that a partition boot sector does it. And if your filesystem is so complex that it needs more than 510 bytes of code to read a small file, you're using the wrong filesystem for a bootloader (or entirely).

The MBR has no menu. The basic stuff is "find active partition, load first sector, jump to it".

Maybe Grub doesn't. I was pointing out that my experimental MBR bootloader did the same but first presented a menu.

If you're thinking grub should load the code from some fixed space in the Linux partition, then every single FS would have to agree to reserve that space. Including the ones like JFS that come from elsewhere.

Argh. No. Your boot sector is stored in the first sector of your boot partition and it reads as appropriate for that filesystem. If you don't want to have a dedicated system/boot partition, you can shift the original boot sector somewhere into the filesystem if enough of it isn't needed after initial boot.

In my understanding, a partition having a boot sector is a DOS convention, that other filesystems don't necessarily follow.

That might be a problem. But if you're going to use arcane filesystems, have a separate system/boot partition. It's really no problem except, as you suggest, if you have (1) an old/buggy BIOS which can only read from the start of the drive; and (2) some reason you can't relocate + renumber partitions. Is this a problem for any PC built in the past decade?

If you mean a special, reserved partition, then that reduces the number of primary partitions for other purposes to 3, which creates compatibility issues. And if there are 4 primary ones already, you're screwed.

For the n'th time, there is no reason you can't boot from a logical partition. If you already have 4 primary partitions, convert one to a logical partition.

So we're left with the case where you already have 4 partitions containing operating systems which cannot boot from an extended partition, each with a filesystem which requires the full content of the first sector other than during boot, and each sufficiently complex that it cannot be read with MBR code. Cases?

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[bug1]

"It would, if you could actually get more than four partitions on a hard drive with the 90+% of BIOSes which can't boot properly from a GPT drive."

You might be interested to hear of a new feature people are calling "Extended Partitions".

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[vadim_t]

The MBR doesn't need to read a filesystem. It's good enough that a partition boot sector does it. And if your filesystem is so complex that it needs more than 510 bytes of code to read a small file, you're using the wrong filesystem for a bootloader (or entirely).

Like other people mentioned, dedicating a partition to the bootloader is undesirable, as it runs into issues with recovery partitions.

Maybe Grub doesn't. I was pointing out that my experimental MBR bootloader did the same but first presented a menu.

Your menu probably was hardcoded. Grub reads the menu from disk. I mean that if you have installed Linux on ext4, grub will actually read /etc/grub/menu.lst from ext4, and load the config file from it. If you think of storing it inside the MBR, then it's awfully small for things like listing multiple kernel versions with descriptive labels. That won't fit in the boot sector either, so you still must read ext4 or whatever.

The other way to do it is giving it a pointer to a list of blocks, which as you said sucks, and will break if anything on the disk moves in a way that doesn't correspond with the mapping.

For the n'th time, there is no reason you can't boot from a logical partition. If you already have 4 primary partitions, convert one to a logical partition.

I don't think you can convert transparently. In my understanding, an extended partition has an extended partition record right where the boot sector on a primary would be. To covert a primary to an extended you'd have to shrink the filesystem and push it down by several blocks so that it starts on cylinder 0 too.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Skapare]

A 512 byte sector (MBR) does not have enough space for code to read a filesystem. So either you waste a whole partition just for the next bootloader stage ... which in the days of MBR partitions, there were not enough available to do that ... or you just sequence the sectors after the MBR, which then gives enough space to load minimal filesystem read-only support. LILO can play tricks to fake raw sectors inside a filesystem, but that is a very fragile setup that breaks whenever the filesystem is changed.

It has been quite normal for decades to have boot loader code in the sectors right after the MBR. It has never been normal for any other code to put anything here.

With the new GUID Partition Table (GPT) format, there are 128 partitions available. That's enough to use one or two for boot loader extra code. Any demands for bootloaders to put their next stage code inside a partition should be paired with the demand to use GPT, too.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Drgnkght]

Who said they do? It might be interesting to install these programs on a standard windows-only PC and see if/how they break each other.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a reason for it. The first thing the computer does is find the first couple of bytes in a particular location in Sector 0 on the disk and use those bytes to perform a jump. This jump is limited in terms of the distance it can jump to. Remember the problems the LILO boot loader had with this? Well, the way this is gotten around is to have a small program nearby in that "embedded" area, instead, which is always a "jumpable" location by that first short-range jump.

So the alternative to using this "embedded" area is to be limited in terms of where the rest of the boot loader is located, such as within a "/boot" partition.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[hazem]

You might be interested to hear of a new feature people are calling "Extended Partitions".

If your computer comes pre-installed with an OS partition and 3 recovery partitions, then you can't add an extended partition without removing one of those other partitions. The extended partition, which can hold other partitions, must be one of the 4 primary partitions on the disk.

I suppose if you were very careful you could use the linux partition manager and change the type of one of the recovery partitions to an extended one, then re-create the same sectors as a logical partition in that extended partition. But it's not the kind of thing I'd do on a disk where I cared about not losing its contents.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not. It's a fucking hack for lazy people; another layer of obfuscation to ruin performance and another thing to break.

GPT was the answer you were looking for.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[FuckingNickName]

Like other people mentioned, dedicating a partition to the bootloader is undesirable, as it runs into issues with recovery partitions.

What issues? If you mean "the presence of a recovery partition means fewer unused partitions" then, yes, of course it may. Just as the presence of multiple operating systems may. But you're foolish if you start custom installing operating systems on your machine then try to use an OEM recovery partition. Either use a regular OS install ISO or something like Reflect / TrueImage / Ghost which is designed with multiple partitions in mind.

Your menu probably was hardcoded. Grub reads the menu from disk.

No, the same code used to search for a particular partition (primary/logical) would first be instructed to list each partition number and type. Not a sufficiently informative UI for production, but there's an awful lot you can do in ~400 bytes if you make the effort.

But a production boot manager would load more substantial code from a particular partition so it could create an elegant, descriptive menu.

In my understanding, an extended partition has an extended partition record right where the boot sector on a primary would be.

Well, the logical partition is only considered to start where indicated by the extended boot record.

To covert a primary to an extended you'd have to shrink the filesystem

Not unless your drive was completely full, in which case you wouldn't have space to repartition for your new OS in the first place.

and push it down by several blocks so that it starts on cylinder 0 too.

On a cylinder boundary? How is this relevant with LBA? What are you actually achieving with a modern drive?

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

News: They have been doing this a long long while, as well as writing to other sectors - this is not the only things that bypasses file system.

Any program tinkering with MBR should
1) Ask Permission
2) Look before writing with intention of co-existing
3) Assess conflicts and chain off them
4) Ask permission to go ahead if it cant work things out.

Grub does not have MS window 'approval' so it is off the hook.

However all the other programs have MS's blessing, and get the right to print those logo's and trademarks that CERTIFY they are obeying the rules. Obviously they are not.

Those programs that look at hardware ids et cetra are also breaking HAL.
Back to Adobes Flex Net - if some claims are true - it should be banned from purchase, if after the i Phone Jailbreak, you don't get it, that 'risk' is HIGH.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[vadim_t]

What issues? If you mean "the presence of a recovery partition means fewer unused partitions" then, yes, of course it may. Just as the presence of multiple operating systems may. But you're foolish if you start custom installing operating systems on your machine then try to use an OEM recovery partition. Either use a regular OS install ISO or something like Reflect / TrueImage / Ghost which is designed with multiple partitions in mind.

You can actually install Linux into a large file hosted on a NTFS partition.

So here's a challenging case:

First partition is NTFS, 500GB free.
Next 3 partitions are primary, recovery data.

Get Linux to install and run from the NTFS partition (in an .img file), while not adding any partitions (you can't), not passing control to the NTFS boot sector (will boot windows, so won't do).

You can actually install Ubuntu in such a way, btw.

No, the same code used to search for a particular partition (primary/logical) would first be instructed to list each partition number and type. Not a sufficiently informative UI for production, but there's an awful lot you can do in ~400 bytes if you make the effort.
But a production boot manager would load more substantial code from a particular partition so it could create an elegant, descriptive menu.

Okay, explain how that will work in the case above, something that's currently in use and supported. Remember the partition table is all full, and in the interest of user friendliness the installer can't make you delete partitions, because that's the entire point of sharing the NTFS one in the first place.

Well, the logical partition is only considered to start where indicated by the extended boot record.

Not sure what you mean there.

Not unless your drive was completely full, in which case you wouldn't have space to repartition for your new OS in the first place.

No, we're on the NTFS partition here. No repartitioning needed.

On a cylinder boundary? How is this relevant with LBA? What are you actually achieving with a modern drive?

You'd be surprised, but people still run DOS and Win95. Legacy stuff. Can't break it arbitrarily.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[FuckingNickName]

A 512 byte sector (MBR) does not have enough space for code to read a filesystem.

If you've written a filesystem sufficiently complex that
(i) you cannot read all files in 510 bytes of code; and
(ii) you cannot read small files flagged to be stored optimised for easy reading such that they can be read in 510 bytes of code
then you're using the wrong filesystem for system boot / recovery. Wherever you're booting your main OS from should be easy to read and hard to corrupt. IOW, /boot is not / is not /home etc.

With the new GUID Partition Table [wikipedia.org] (GPT) format, there are 128 partitions available.

With MBR, there are infinite partitions available (space-permitting).

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[cynyr]

GPT and EFI booting....

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[FuckingNickName]

First partition is NTFS, 500GB free.
Next 3 partitions are primary, recovery data.

We're already considering a completely idiotic setup, even though I'm sure at least one vendor has sold machines configured like that. Of course, we have to go to challenging cases for this horrible hack to even be considered appropriate ;-).

Get Linux to install and run from the NTFS partition (in an .img file), while not adding any partitions (you can't), not passing control to the NTFS boot sector (will boot windows, so won't do).

Either replace the boot code in the NTFS boot sector to load a Grub n'th stage or replace NTLDR (or Vista/7 equivalent) with a Grub n'th stage.

Not sure what you mean there.

I simply meant that the EBR should be considered metadata, not in any sense part of the logical partition.

You'd be surprised, but people still run DOS and Win95. Legacy stuff. Can't break it arbitrarily.

There's no obligation to not re-align on the faked cylinder boundary during any repartition. The space you waste simply ends up not being available for allocation to your new operating system's partition.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Antique Geekmeister]

There were many reasons to switch to grub. The limited namespace for bootable configurations was one: the old 1023 cylinder issue, where the entire partition containing LILO had to be within the first 1023 cylinders of the hard drive, which was why many Linuxes required a small first partition for "/boot", was another. The need to re-install the boot loader, every time you added a kernel to your boot list, was another.

I'm personally hoping for the Linuxbios project to progress and eliminate many of the legacy booting problems, including the peculiar steps necessary for grub and lilo. It's also far faster to boot, much more documented, and supports resetting BIOS settings without rebooting the system.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[bug1]

I assume [g]parted could automatically migrate a primary partition to an extend one in a safe and easy manner, haven't tried it though

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bed time for me now. Thanks for your thoughts. FNN

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily, the purpose of the first sectors of a disk is for system boot and not for windows application software. Even if there is
no such thing as an embedding area, these sectors are certainly not for userland application code and especially there is not a single
sector on my system for anybody's app to write to circumventing the filesystem driver. You create a file and I will delete and reinstall your
app as often as I please on my system. It is my disk, not yours.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[zippthorne]

If you're thinking grub should load the code from some fixed space in the Linux partition, then every single FS would have to agree to reserve that space. Including the ones like JFS that come from elsewhere.

And if GRUB is using unpartitioned space to keep me from having to do that, then why the hell am I advised to stick /boot on its own ext2 partition, and more importantly, why do I have to run the grub utility every time I edit the config file? If I have to run the utility after every change, it can sure as damn recalculate the blocks the relevant files happen to be on.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[macraig]

You're only partially correct about the limitation: normally MBR disks are limited to four PRIMARY partitions. The limit on non-primary (extended) partitions is a bit more generous. Further, some operating systems are able to boot from extended partitions, including Linux. In the specific instance you lamented, then, you could have left ALL the partitions (if you resized one or more) and simply installed Linux into a new extended partition. I have done exactly that myself more than once.

If you want more than four primary partitions, I know of at least one method to get them: BootIt Next Generation.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[macraig]

... you can't add an extended partition without removing one of those other partitions.

You might be interested to hear of a new feature people are calling "partition resizing". It's all the rage... since about the Millenium.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[vlueboy]

My new laptop came with _THREE_ recovery partitions and a Windows partition, so I had to delete one of the recovery partitions to be able to install Linux at all...

I really would like to steer away from that problem you're facing... brand and model, please?

vlueboy

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[peterhoeg]

The BIOS isn't the limiting factor when booting from a GPT disk - the OS is or rather the OS's boot loader.

Windows will not let you boot from a GPT disk on a non-EFI machine, but Linux (using GRUB2 or a patched GRUB1) works perfectly fine with GPT on my two machines here.

Take a look at this page: http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/booting.html

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Alex Belits]

How do you "resize" a partition with unknown and proprietary internal format, that most likely is found by "recovery tools" by its absolute position on the drive?

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Which sucks for the warranty tech (sub contractor) who was not provided any diagnostic disks because the manufacturer expects the utility partition to still be there.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Alex Belits]

Why does your bootloader partition need to concern itself with space efficiency, permissions and filename restrictions?

This was done already, a separate /boot partition.

Everybody ended up hating that idea with a passion.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

And the reason why is because the MBR is tiny, and has no room for code that reads say, ext4.

FLOSS file systems' formated partitions should come with that code stored (perhaps as some interpreted language bytecode, for architectural independence) on them, imho. You know, analogous to how like objects in OOP come with methods attached. Likewise, bootloader shouldn't know file systems' intricate details and work only with those FSs it "knows". Otherwise, it will only get more and more bloated as choice of file systems grows.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[cbhacking]

There's this thing called a Logical Drive... considering that I use different partitions for Windows boot, Windows system, Windows data, Linux system, Linux profile/data, and Linux swap... I need at least six volumes. Actually, sometimes I triple-boot. Seven volumes, one MBR disk! Yes, it can be done.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[hazem]

You might be interested to hear of a new feature people are calling "partition resizing". It's all the rage... since about the Millenium.

Yes, you'd have to resize one to get space for whatever else you want to have, but you can only have 4 primary partitions. If your 4 primary partitions are in use, you cannot trivially make one into an extended partition that then contains its original contents as a logical partition. Someone suggested gpartd could do it, but simply resizing one of our 4 primary partitions will not enable you to then add an extended partition, since you'll have already used up your 4 primary partitions.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[jgrahn]

You might find that ext3, ext4, btrfs, XFS, ZFS and other Unix filesystems might perhaps be a little more complex to read than FAT, particularly if you have to support all of them.

As far as I can see, you'd only have to support one of them at the time -- the one the /boot partition uses. ext2 in my case. (And perhaps GRUB already does it that way; I don't know anything about this.)

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[taara]

MBR is 512bytes long. Have you looked inside of it? I wrote a hack some 20 years ago to enable multiboot for MS-DOS and AT&T UNIX, not with the orthodox menu, but just a text saying "Press D or U" and waiting for the keypress. As I recall, it was a very close shave. I think I used up every single byte of the given 512 minus the partition table after trying several combinations. You are right - MBR allows for infinite number of partitions (space-permitting), and space permits no more than four. Logical partitions are a different story and are described elsewhere, not in the MBR.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[macraig]

The point of the resizing would be to make space for another extended partition, not another primary one. As I noted elsewhere in this discussion, Linux and certain other operating systems can be installed into and booted from logical volumes in extended partitions.

You CAN have more than four primary partitions, though... sorta: BootIt Next Generation.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[macraig]

Siwwy Wabbit... you wouldn't try to resize THAT one anyway, you'd resize the partition of an actual operating system like, say... Windows? That WAS the point after all, right, to get more than one operating system on there? How big is a recovery partition anyway? That's right: they're tiny and inconsequential; trying to resize one to make space for an actual working operating system would be an exercise in stupi... errr, futility.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[FuckingNickName]

Ignoring the obvious utility of a partition which is easy to read and rarely mounted for write so it's kept intact even if horrible things happen to the main system partition, what horrible incantations do you use for FDE which includes /boot encryption?

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[thsths]

> Though adobe in this one looks like they deserve to be slapped around a bit, if the conjecture is accurate.

Adobe deserve to be slapped around a bit (and then a bit more). Period.

Otherwise I think the problem is (again) the BIOS. It only loads the 1st sector to boot, when 63 sectors (or 2048 with EFI) are reserved. Back in the old days you could just fit some FAT16 code in there to find the DOS image - but only at the expense of error handling. Nowadays you have to load the next stage from a fixed position - and the only position that is certainly fixed are the other 62 sectors. So they are the logical place for a boot loader.

You could add a boot partition, but with only 4 partitions available, that would use up a very limited resource. And I guess even if you put a boot partition into the first 63 sectors (which is now perfectly possible), Adobe would still overwrite it (and Windows would possibly freak out).

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning#Extended_partition

Just because you don't know how to do it doesn't mean it isn't easy.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[FireFury03]

You're only partially correct about the limitation: normally MBR disks are limited to four PRIMARY partitions. The limit on non-primary (extended) partitions is a bit more generous.

Nope, an extended partition is just a different type of primary partition - your extended + primary partitions can't sum to more than 4. The only thing an extended partition may contain is one or more logical volumes - these are what you can put your actual data in, not the extended partition itself.

So if you already have 4 primary partitions, you cannot create an extended partition (and thus any logical volumes) without deleting one of them. You _could_ replace the primary Windows partition with an extended partition and then put all the data it contained in a logical volume within it (assuming Windows is happy to exist in a logical volume?), but this involves much shuffling of data because you have to insert the extended boot record at the start of the partition, so it certainly isn't a trivial operation.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's exactly what grub does? All the MBR does is point the processor to a disk location to begin reading data in. All the 'guts' are inside the /boot filesystem.

How does grub make this impossible? There are known standards for what goes in the boot block, the MBR gets to use the rest. The first block "belongs to" grub, not some fucking application.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not "unpartitioned space" it's reserved space. You will never be able to partition that section of the hard drive. The only software which has any reason to access it, let alone write to it, is the bootloader itself, and that's what it has been traditionally used for. Which is part of the reason that you might have to reinstall your bootloader when adding additional OS's to your system.

User-level software shouldn't even be allowed to access data outside a partitioned area, and only certain specific super-user level tools should be able to read this area, or the MBR, etc.

The complaint isn't that other programs are wiping that data, the complaint is that some user-level applications are starting to use that area as storage themselves. Specifically, they are writing info to that space so when you remove their software completely, and dig out the Windows registry keys, and manually hunt down and wipe all the other files they leave lurking on your computer, you will still miss this last little spot. Think of it as the ultimate location for Stealth Cookies.

And it isn't the GRUB people throwing a fit at all. If you'd bothered to read the link, you'd find the GRUB guys are trying to figure out what software is writing to which parts of that space so they can modify their code to compensate.

For situations like PC Angel doing this, PC Angel is designed to restore your machine back to the state it was in when you first obtained it. It makes complete sense for things like GRUB and its rogue data sitting in unpartitioned space to be overwritten when that happens

Nobody's talking about drive restoration tools except you. No Shit it would make sense for a bit-by-bit restore function to, well, restore all the bits. The issue is that if you want to boot more than OS, you're gonna have to use a customer loader, and there isn't any real standardization which requires BIOS to support an extended bootloader. The bigger issue is that Windows allows user-level applications to write willy-nilly to the HDD, which is why the BIOS makers put the option to restrict writes to the MBR there in the first place. Windows will happily allow programs to fuck with your MBR, which should NEVER happen. If Windows properly restricted access to such areas of the HDD in the first place, this wouldn't even be an issue unless you were trying to install multiple bootloaders, since those are the only things that have any business messing with that space to start with.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[vadim_t]

And if GRUB is using unpartitioned space to keep me from having to do that, then why the hell am I advised to stick /boot on its own ext2 partition

The 1024 cylinders limit. You don't have to do it if you have a modern BIOS.

Another reason to do it is because you boot from a filesystem that grub doesn't support yet. The ext* and reiserfs filesystems are supported fine though.

and more importantly, why do I have to run the grub utility every time I edit the config file? If I have to run the utility after every change, it can sure as damn recalculate the blocks the relevant files happen to be on.

Grub doesn't require this. What you probably have is a distribution script, that takes your config file, sticks something on top and on the bottom, and writes that to the real grub config.

Also, with the blocks thing, the problem is: what if your filesystem has defragmentation, or you install a new kernel and it gets written over where the old one was? Oops, now the system doesn't boot. Block lists have to be updated every time the location on the disk changes, not just when the config does.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[ScrewMaster]

Which sucks for the warranty tech (sub contractor) who was not provided any diagnostic disks because the manufacturer expects the utility partition to still be there.

And that is just patently ridiculous. I simply cannot believe that users have accepted manufacturers saving a few pennies by not shipping a CD or DVD of the operating system.

That contractor either a. has a copy of the requisite media, or can get it or b. can't replace a defective hard drive. Lose the drive, lose the recovery data.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[vadim_t]

We're already considering a completely idiotic setup, even though I'm sure at least one vendor has sold machines configured like that. Of course, we have to go to challenging cases for this horrible hack to even be considered appropriate ;-)

Horrible or not, you have to deal with it. Things in the real world are rarely ideal, and if it fails to work it'll be considered to be your fault even if it isn't.

Either replace the boot code in the NTFS boot sector to load a Grub n'th stage or replace NTLDR (or Vista/7 equivalent) with a Grub n'th stage.

That will be even worse. Instead of 4 programs that break it, it'll break on every windows update that updates the bootloader.

I simply meant that the EBR should be considered metadata, not in any sense part of the logical partition.

Still don't get what you mean. I mean that (example numbers):

Option A:
MBR is on sector 0.
First primary partition starts on sector 64, where its boot sector is.

Option B:
MBR is on sector 0.
There's an extended partition record, pointing to sector 64.
The extended partition record points to the start of the partition, which must be on sector 65 or higher.

Thus, you can't convert transparently from primary to logical. To convert you'd have to push all the partition's data down by one sector, if it's even possible.

There's no obligation to not re-align on the faked cylinder boundary during any repartition. The space you waste simply ends up not being available for allocation to your new operating system's partition.

There's no obligation for modern systems. Old OSes require partitions to be aligned on a cylinder boundary, and don't know there's such a thing as LBA.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hasn't most copy protection relied on doing things you wouldn't normally do on a file system? They do things that would usually be considered errors, then check that the right errors are in place before continuing.

As for what prevents the programs from overwriting each other, nothing does. You can't tell me that you've never had problems with some copy protected software, surely.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Improv]

GRUB is a bootloader. Policywise it makes sense for early boot stuff to live outside partitions, in the MBR and elsewhere. It does not make sense for applications residing in an OS to reach outside their container and scribble on things - they neither do nor should assume they understand what lies outside their box, and it is all-elbows for them to just make assumptions and do it. What if an unusual partitioning scheme is being used (other than traditional PC partitioning)? What if sometime down the road disks are treated in a very different way and they literally can't do stuff like this?

The stuff outside of a partition is always an ill-defined area without a lot of standards. It's traditionally the realm of the person setting up the system combined with ad-hoc decisions of authors of operating systems and the like. This roughly works - sometimes people step on each others toes or need to dance out of somebody else's way, but provided nobody is actually malicious it ends up ok in the end. What does not work is when applications running on any OS demands, particularly with little documentation or choice, to be much ruder than its host OS. What GRUB is doing is acceptable; what these other bits of software are doing is not.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[FuckingNickName]

Horrible or not, you have to deal with it. Things in the real world are rarely ideal, and if it fails to work it'll be considered to be your fault even if it isn't.

I'm not sure what kind of user just *expects* you to be able to install Linux on any machine without shifting around any of your original data. The average user doesn't care about installing a new OS at all, and the user with more than a couple of Windows OS upgrades under his belt knows that you're not always going to experience a seamless experience.

Nevertheless, you don't build in a hack applied on every machine just to deal with extreme cases.

Since we're dealing with pathological cases, I assume that the case where there's no space between MBR and first partition is also automatically handled by this Ubuntu-over-NTFS thing?

That will be even worse. Instead of 4 programs that break it, it'll break on every windows update that updates the bootloader.

A bootloader update is predictable and can be checked for on each Windows startup. Indeed, Windows (as other OS) upgrades may replace the MBR without asking, so I assume this is happening already.

A random program writing to unpartitioned space or a restore utility assuming that unpartitioned space can zeroed on restore is much harder to mitigate against.

Of course, you could just stop being so territorial about the MBR and get the NT bootloader to chainload GRUB if you think it's really needed for this specific case.

Thus, you can't convert transparently from primary to logical. To convert you'd have to push all the partition's data down by one sector, if it's even possible.

Oh, transparently = quickly. Well, if you're not explicitly modifying the size of any earlier partitions and you have no interpartition gaps to use up and your partitioning tool can't gracefully reduce the size of any earlier filesystem by one sector, yes.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[vadim_t]

Since we're dealing with pathological cases, I assume that the case where there's no space between MBR and first partition is also automatically handled by this Ubuntu-over-NTFS thing?

I'm not sure how the ubuntu installer would handle it, but grub would complain, refuse to install, and ask to manually confirm usage of a block list, which as you said is a kind of horrible solution.

A bootloader update is predictable and can be checked for on each Windows startup. Indeed, Windows (as other OS) upgrades may replace the MBR without asking, so I assume this is happening already.

And predictably happens on every single computer that gets updated, instead on just one of the few using some program with a stupid form of DRM. I think probably the first case happens quite a bit more often than the second.

A random program writing to unpartitioned space or a restore utility assuming that unpartitioned space can zeroed on restore is much harder to mitigate against.

It's easier to mitigate actually. Normal programs have no business at all writing there, hence you can complain to the program's maker. If enough people complain they'll get the hit.

On the other hand, MS has perfectly legitimate reasons for writing into the MBR, at least when something boot related is updated.

Oh, transparently = quickly.

By "transparently" I mean quickly, 100% exactly and with no chance of something going horribly wrong, yes.

Well, if you're not explicitly modifying the size of any earlier partitions

That would take a few hours, since you're not just shrinking or expanding a partition, you're moving all the 500GB or whatever of it. As such it's not a very attractive option.

and you have no interpartition gaps to use up

Well, guess what the "embedding area" is? If it's okay to use it for something like this then what grub is doing is perfectly legitimate. If it isn't, then it's not a legitimate option for this either.

and your partitioning tool can't gracefully reduce the size of any earlier filesystem by one sector, yes.

Again, the problem isn't so much shrinking it, as having to move the whole thing, which would easily take a few hours, during which anything that goes wrong risks horrible corruption.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes sense for a bootloader to place data and code outside of partitioned space. It makes more sense to place the code inside a partition, even if it's a one-track partition dedicated to the bootloader.

Exactly! I remember that back in 1992 or so, I was using OS/2 2.0; it had a nifty bootloader, and that one used its own partition (1 MB, I think) to store everything it needed. GRUB should arguably do the same.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[antdude]

What if we don't want to blow the old partitions away? We might need them again if discs fail or whatever!

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[jonaskoelker]

How would you like it if every time you ran NewSuperGameWithDRM, Photoshop lost it's license and forced you to phone home to reconfirm it?

I don't think NewSuperGameWithDRMStudioExecutive thinks nor cares particularly about consumer convenience, he just wants people's money.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[couchslug]

"What if we don't want to blow the old partitions away? We might need them again if discs fail or whatever!"

That was either an attempt at humor, or gibberish.

Anyone advanced enough to dual-boot should be expected (and expect if necessary) to be able to do a bare-metal restore, and to image the whole hard disk or partitions thereof as necessary to cover their arse.

Learn that stuff BEFORE mucking about with dual-booting. It's been basic procedure since the 1990s when the first convenient distros (such as Mandrake) came out with tools to facilitate dual-booting.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[antdude]

Nope. Not everyone knows it. People just do it since because it is automatic and simple like installing Ubuntu.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[FuckingNickName]

And predictably happens on every single computer that gets updated

Which is why the "correct" solution in this case is to chain load GRUB from the Windows bootloader (if you choose GRUB at all).

Well, guess what the "embedding area" is? If it's okay to use it for something like this

It's okay to extend a partition into empty space. It's not okay to use space for storage while it's not part of any partition.

Again, the problem isn't so much shrinking it,

If you want to make primary partition n into a logical partition then the obvious quick option is to slightly shrink partition n-1 to fit the metadata for the extended partition. Then you don't have to move the actal data for partition n at all.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[jd]

Coreboot or OpenBIOS will let you boot multiple OS' without having to worry about the MBR. Ok, they do have certain disadvantages (though reportedly causing Windows to morph into a cockroach is not really that much of a disadvantage), but they do solve the problem.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[badkarmadayaccount]

Multiboot? Only one fs for /boot? Possible, but not convinient.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[badkarmadayaccount]

How much effort would it be to have very basic ro supoort for NTFS in GRUB?

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[vadim_t]

Which is why the "correct" solution in this case is to chain load GRUB from the Windows bootloader (if you choose GRUB at all).

Point.

It's okay to extend a partition into empty space. It's not okay to use space for storage while it's not part of any partition.

That depends on exactly what empty space you mean, IMO. The most interesting to me seems the space between the MBR and the first partition, which exists due to legacy alignment. I can see 3 possibilities:

A. It's off-bounds to everybody. It can't be used by the bootloader, it can't be used by any programs, and it may not ever be allocated by anything. It's deemed permanently reserved to be kept empty. Doing anything else with it is officially forbidden and invokes nasal demons.
B. The thing that has the most rights to claim it is the bootloader. Either it can use it outright, or it can unilaterally change the partition table to officially make a partition from it. Either way, anything else has to tolerate that state of affairs.
C. Anything can use it for any purpose, but beware of the consequences.

IMO, your claim comes closest to B. If it's okay for the bootloader to go and create a partition in there without any questions, then whatever else might want to use it has to roll over. But in such a case the boot loader really owns the area already, whether it's explicitly reserved or not.

Re:WTF is the "embedding area"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Change one partition into a an extended then fill it with as many logicla partitons as you like... !

Move along

[Jorl17]

Nothing to see here...Just proprietary companies fucking up some computers. What do they care? They've got a large market to sere that doesn't run our far-superior POSIX compatible kernels.

I honestly hope there is a way to sue them, though I don't think there is.

Re:Move along

[vux984]

Just proprietary companies fucking up some computers.

Does grub have any more reason to be there these other companies? It looks like nobody is supposed to be there... including grub.

Re:Move along

[arose]

Yes, it does. GRUB deals with the boot process, it's one of the things that do have any business of being there.

Re:Move along

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, GRUB belongs in the MBR, not in some unpartioned space that is not supposed to be of use, if they have a problem with that, just keep that thing (GRUB) small or create a partition.

Re:Move along

[lgw]

They've got a large market to sere that doesn't run our far-superior POSIX compatible kernels.

Windows (at least the current NT-based flavors) is POSIX compatible, you know.

Re:Move along

[bkpark]

Nothing to see here...Just proprietary companies fucking up some computers. What do they care? They've got a large market to sere that doesn't run our far-superior POSIX compatible kernels.

I honestly hope there is a way to sue them, though I don't think there is.

If those POSIX compatible kernels are so superior, why was anyone running the "inferior" Windows operating system in the first place?

The way I see it, people who are affected by this deserve it—they shouldn't have been dual-booting into Windows in the first place.

Re:Move along

[RobertLTux]

sort of the same way a hummer is JATO compatable

Re:Move along

[osu-neko]

Does grub have any more reason to be there these other companies?

It does if I put it there. Nothing should be automatically written into partitioned space. Partitioning defines what areas of the disk I want to be automatically written to using whatever scheme I define by setting the partition type. Anything outside that, I'm free to manage any way I please. I can put a block-oriented FORTH program there if I like, individually managing "screen" loads and saves in the FORTH code. Or whatever. The point is, they're my blocks to do with as a like, and nothing should be written there except what I explicitly write there.

Among other things, it does mean that if I choose to write GRUB data there, it should be perfectly safe there. If it isn't, that's a serious bug in whatever program overwrote the unpartitioned block(s).

Re:Move along

[osu-neko]

Nothing should be automatically written into partitioned space.

Gah! UNpartitioned. Nothing should be automatically written into unpartitioned space.

Re:Move along

[lgw]

Windows really is - it's just that "POSIX compatible" isn't a very useful label.

Re:Move along

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't actually true. It used to be. Windows NT was POSIX.1 compatible (which is not very useful, and definitely doesn't imply that you can take POSIX software and run it on Windows NT without significant porting effort).

But Microsoft removed that feature from Windows XP onwards. Now the only way to get POSIX compatibility in Windows is to download and install a separate component that adds limited POSIX capabilities. Frankly anyone who cares about POSIX will just use an actual UNIX or a clone like GNU/Linux.

Re:Move along

[Jorl17]

I really don't know why they were running it.

Oh, wait, I do! It's because there's next to none PR for Linux and, thus, new users who are used to Windows decide to try it out in a "safe" environment (the real-thing safe, not the VM safe). It's because the inferior Windows operating system is around and everywhere that so many people can't get rid of it with ease. I, myself, dual-booted an old Windows for a year until I made the final move to my beloved operating system, which obeys my every command.

And why shouldn't they "be dual booting into Windows in the first place"? Who the hell are you to decide the "moral" of running an OS or not? You may judge the OS architecture and judge users -- however, you cannot objectify your opinion and state that "they shouldn't be doing X". You can say that "In my opinion, they shouldn't be doing X".

Now go reboot your machine, I'm sure Windows has updated for the fifth time of the day already.

Re:Move along

[Jorl17]

Oh, yes! Much like .NET is cross-platform! And the Windows API!!


Oh, wait...

Re:Move along

[lgw]

Ah, good point. It was always kind of a joke with Windows anyhow. But Interix (Service for Unix or whatever they call it), isn't terrible, and has much of the important crap you need that isn't part of "POSIX-1", such as pthreads.

As you say, anyone who "Cares about POSIX" will use a real unix, but that wasn't the point. Interix was designed for companies that have mostly moved to Windows, but have a few legacy unix apps they can't abandon. I've done a bit of actual programming in the environment, and it has little to recommend it over any modern unix, but there's some pretty ugly ancient crap out there that's "POSIX compatible".

Re:Move along

[hedwards]

These sorts of screw ups make me think that perhaps commercial software companies ought not be be given a free pass for when a bug in their software nukes customer data. For free software whether it be opensource or just free, I can understand not requiring responsibility, if you're not making any money on it then you should be able to disclaim the risks and not be liable. But I do wonder how many of the bugs in Windows would exist if MS were responsible for breaches due to their shoddy code practices. Even if they weren't held responsible for user initiated stupidity.

Re:Move along

[Aredridel]

The boot information for your OS has to live somewhere. If you want it to be any smarter than "load the first thing it finds", starting in the MBR and going from there is smart. Easy to do in the constraints of an early boot environment.

And either way, applications should not be mucking with the low-level bits of your hard drive without extensive documentation of that fact at least.

Re:Move along

[0123456]

Wrong, GRUB belongs in the MBR, not in some unpartioned space that is not supposed to be of use, if they have a problem with that, just keep that thing (GRUB) small or create a partition.

How do you plan to boot from an arbitrary Linux partition using a 512-byte boot loader?

Re:Move along

[Dahamma]

The way most other boot loaders have done it (including the original GRUB). Put enough code in the MBR to load the rest of the code and config out of a second location. The smart ones actually use a real partition for that, though, so no one overwrites it.

Re:Move along

[Nimey]

Heh, funnily enough that's exactly what Windows 7 does. If you install it to an empty drive, it'll create two partitions - one small one (a couple hundred megs?) for the boot loader, and the rest for Windows itself.

Re:Move along

[Skapare]

There is only 446 bytes available in the MBR. That's insufficient for code that can read a filesystem to find the 2nd stage image. When we go to 4096 byte sectors, there might be.

Re:Move along

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent of this post is so retarded that "Skapare" should be ashamed of themselves.

You need to pull your head out of your ass and see how real operating systems do it.

Riddle me this: If 446 bytes is too small to do anything useful, how is it that FreeBSD figures out how to put entire interactive menu system into it and also load its second stage boot program with a complete forth interpreter from its one partition on this disk?

The interactive menu system is completely optional though... you can just opt for a dumb traditional version.

Basically GRUB has reinvented poorly what other operating systems have been doing for decades.

Re:Move along

[Dahamma]

Well, you are correct that the parent is wrong ("retarded" I will leave to others to judge). It's a fact that the PC BIOS reads the MBR to start the boot process, so if it was not capable of subsequently reading from a secondary location then the boot process of ALL PCs MUST BE MAGIC!

But to your comment, the FreeBSD menu system also loads out of a secondary location. it's just not enough space to store the code and data for anything more than loading something else.

I have worked on bootloaders for more than one architecture in the past, so these facts are not open to discussion :)

Re:Move along

[Dahamma]

Yeah, that's actually why most Linux distros recommend a "/boot" partition that is as simple as possible (ie ext2, not a journaling fs). Once the files are written to that partition, it stores the exact location of the executable and config files into the MBR so that it can find them.

At least that's how "GRUB 1" worked... sounds like "GRUB 2" tried to be clever and it didn't work out so well...

Re:Move along

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole first track belongs to the bootloader/partition information. It's supposed to be of some use. (Granted LBA has confused the issue some) Look up the specifications. (I'd suggest something close to the originals, as the partitioning scheme referred to as DOS these days is a kludge on top of a whole stack more kludges.)

Re:Move along

[RAMMS EIN]

Also, you are correct that POSIX-compatible isn't necessarily very useful. It very much depends on which parts of POSIX have been implemented, and which versions. Some POSIX-compatible systems look quite unlike a traditional Unix system (e.g. many embedded OSes that may, for example, not support multiple processes), and POSIX APIs do not necessarily result in working programs (e.g. on OpenVMS, where POSIX calls cannot necessarily access every type of file). These systems may be POSIX-compliant and even certified, but that doesn't mean software written to the POSIX APIs will work and do what you want.

Re:Move along

[Anonymous Coward]

you only really need the disk address of what to load next in the MBR. The rest (be it kernel or a general purpose boot loader) simply needs to reside somewhere something else won't fuck with it... either in its own partition, in firmware, or as an unmovable object in another filesystem.

Re:Move along

[tenco]

Until now i didn't know that grub 2 wrote data there despite having installed and updated grub 2 several times. And grub 2 never asked me if i wanted data written there. So by your logic, the programmers of grub 2 are as guilty as all the other ones who write programs writing to unpartitioned space without asking the user.

Re:Move along

[SEE]

Actually, every version of Windows since XP has also shipped with it--if you bought the right edition. Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Vista Enterprise/Ultimate, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7 Enterprise/Ultimate all shipped with the "Subsystem for Unix-based Applications".

Re:Move along

[arose]

Stage 1.5 five, is necessary in some cases. Why do you think you know the problems involved in making a universal boot loader then the people who made a rather good one?

Re:Move along

[QuantumBeep]

Without even looking, I can assure you that they do not cram a bloody FORTH interpreter into 446 bytes ;)

Re:Move along

[Anonymous Coward]

This 100 megs partition isn't for the boot loader, its for the TPM encryption support

So that's what happened...

[azt3k]

I run a windows 7 unbuntu 10.04 dual boot, Ubuntu keeps deleting windows 7 from my grub.cfg everytime grub updates, now windows makes grub unbootable altogether. Wicked. This would explain why my laptop got stuck in an endless reboot loop yesterday... Sigh...

Re:So that's what happened...

[The MAZZTer]

IIRC there's a part of grub.cfg that is marked with comments to not be auto-replaced when grub takes inventory of your linux kernel versions. Put the Windows stuff in there.

Re:So that's what happened...

[gearloos]

If you want to keep your windows next time, just say no on the screen to update grub.config map. It will still update everything, it just won't re-map your tables.-I used to have that problem and that was what I did to stop it, well beside having the pleasure of deleting windows when i quit playing EQ2 and NEVER looking back... haha

Re:So that's what happened...

[Arancaytar]

Ubuntu keeps deleting windows 7 from my grub.cfg everytime grub updates

That is why the first line of grub.cfg reads: "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE. It is automatically generated ... using templates from /etc/grub.d."

So if you want to put something in grub.cfg, edit the files in /etc/grub.d to make it persistent.

Re:So that's what happened...

[Teun]

/etc/grub.d/40_custom

Re:So that's what happened...

[hedwards]

I had the same problem with FreeBSD and Win XP being nuked from the configuration file. There is a provision for doing just that so that the configuration gets updated correctly without further interaction from the user. Once I got tired enough of that to look for a solution, it didn't take long to find. I suspect there's a rather long list of OSes that are effected, probably the same list of OSes that require manual intervention the first time.

Re:So that's what happened...

[couchslug]

Run one as the main OS, one in a VM. You get simultaneous access to both. no problem.

Re:So that's what happened...

[tenco]

AFAICS only if you run Debian or sth based on it.

Not a bug.

[Anonymous Coward]

Grrr, I hate how he starts by calling it a bug.

A bug is a program doing something that the software did not intend. This is hardly that.

Is it criminal trespass of your computer, yes. At least if the program does not disclose that it will be using this shared area.

Re:Not a bug.

[Andorin]

Ah, I don't think the programmers behind these applications meant for their little signature to knock down GRUB. That sounds like an unintended action to me.

Re:Not a bug.

[Ironhandx]

Given the level of fanboyism displayed by a lot of people these days I think you may be very very surprised at the actual answer to the question "Did they mean to do it"

I doubt it was a company policy since none of those are Microsoft but still, even thats a possibility, and it really shouldn't be.

It is free for all region

[Technomancer]

While MBR has some function, the rest of sectors between MBR and the first partition was always a great area.
Many MBR viruses put their stuff there. Many stupid programs use it to store DRM data, so they can check whether they were copied to other computer
If GRUB is using this region too, it is equally stupid. There is no protocol for allocating this area and there is no guarantee that this data is not going to be overwritten by any other stupid program.
So nothing to see here, move aling, it is just Core Wars between stupid programs.
GRUB developers should have known better.

Re:It is free for all region

[sjames]

There is a fairly strong convention there that userspace data goes in partitions and boot loaders low-level stuff go outside of partitions. The "unused" sectors on track 0 have long been considered as reserved for boot loader. It's even in the original specs.

Yeah, viruses use that space sometimes, but by nature a virus ignores boundaries anyway, DRM, that is, software that hides itself from the user and makes the computer malfunction (by not doing the owner's bidding) is just a special case of virus.

Re:It is free for all region

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's even in the original specs.

Please cite this.

Re:It is free for all region

[hedwards]

Except that grub uses that space before it knows anything about the rest of the disk layout. Meaning that by putting it there, the likelihood of it accidentally nuking things while loading up modules to parse out the rest of the disk is greatly reduced. One of the issues that we've had for quite some time is that there's a very small amount of space dedicated to bootloaders by default, and some adjustment has to be made for more complicated set ups. Additionally by keeping it out of the user partitions there's a greatly reduced chance that grub will itself corrupt user data rather than just the easy to regenerate grub configuration files. Remember grub does have to write things there from time to time, rather than just read.

Re:It is free for all region

[rawler]

The "grub should'nt do this" point comes up a few times here.

However, one thing that eludes me is; is there really any sane area to write bootloader-code above MBR-sizes in a PC-BIOS boot system?

What happens if you gpt-partition your disk? Does the windows programs disregard and overwrite in the same way?

Or is the only decent way out of this EFI?

Re:It is free for all region

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM, that is, software that hides itself from the user and makes the computer malfunction (by not doing the owner's bidding) is just a special case of virus.

Oh silly poster... of course it's doing the owners bidding. After all, with any DRM package on a PC, that PC is no longer *yours*.

Re:It is free for all region

[Technomancer]

It is not in any "specs"
Most partitioning programs including original DOS fdisk aligned the first partition the next full cylinder. There is actually no need for this because there is a starting sector field in MBR partition table so first partition can start right after the MBR and there wouldnt be space to put anything after MBR. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record
If you really want to make your bootloader bigger than a single sector, create a small partition, put the rest of the bootloader code there. Make MBR load from the rest of your parition and then look at the real active partition and boot by default from there. Not that hard and completely safe.

Re:It is free for all region

[sjames]

I would like to, but that was decades ago in dead tree form.

Re:It is free for all region

[Skapare]

That area has traditionally been boot loader space, even on non-MBR computers. Now with the GUID Partition Table (GPT) format, there are now enough partitions available to waste one for a boot loader 2nd image. And guess what ... GPT uses that space after MBR for its own table. Basically, the space belongs to the system. Sure, we know malware often uses it. But that make any excuse for applications to do so. If anything, anti-virus code should always be blocking writing to this area by any application, even with administrator rights.

If you think GRUB developers should have done it different, please explain how. And don't use LILO's stupid hack as an excuse, because that breaks all the time.

If anything, people should just not give applications any administrator rights. Better yet, if you have to run Windows with Linux, run it in a virtual machine.

Re:It is free for all region

[Skapare]

It is legacy that the system "owns" the entire first disk track, not just the first sector. In the case of PCs with 63 sectors per track, that means all sectors from 0 to 62 which make the first track. It would be fewer sectors for smaller tracks in different geometry.

Re:It is free for all region

[Skapare]

Change all your references to sectors into being a reference to track, then you'll have it right. That's the way systems have worked for decades.

Re:It is free for all region

[Skapare]

It has been tradition for the system (bootloader, OS, etc) to "own" the first track (which can mean up to 63 sectors on PCs with legacy CHS MBRs). MBR doesn't have enough partitions to waste. With GPT, now you have 128 of them, though GPT uses 34 sectors, not just one (and a duplicate set at the end of the drive for backup). The decent way out of this is to leave the first entire track to the system.

Re:It is free for all region

[Technomancer]

Tracks were on floppies on Amiga ;-)
PC has Sectors, Heads and Cylinders -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder-head-sector
Or LBA (Logical Block Address) sector number.
That's the way system worked for decades.

Re:It is free for all region

[Technomancer]

The problem is nobody owns it. This is what got GRUB developers in trouble. It is just there as an artifact of aligning first partition to full cylinder. Which is not requirement either, fdisk just did it so then everyone else followed.
Since nobody owns it and it is not specified anywhere it has become free for all to mess with it. And hilarity ensued.

Re:It is free for all region

[RAMMS EIN]

``The problem is nobody owns it. This is what got GRUB developers in trouble. It is just there as an artifact of aligning first partition to full cylinder. Which is not requirement either, fdisk just did it so then everyone else followed.
Since nobody owns it and it is not specified anywhere it has become free for all to mess with it. And hilarity ensued.''

Right.

Unlike many other posters of this thread, however, I think there is something to be said for using the entire space before the first partition (can be one sector, can be multiple cylinders) for the boot loader. There is simply only so much code you can put in the MBR, and although you can implement support for FAT (at least FAT12 and FAT16) there, I wouldn't expect the same to be true for other filesystems. Support for such filesystems needs to go somewhere, so why not in a "boot area"?

Of course, if you want to expect something to work, it needs to be specified, so there would need to be a standard for it. Perhaps the MBR could be extended with a description of the boot area (and, probably, a magic number to indicate the presence of this information), or perhaps the description and magic numbers could be put in the newly defined boot area itself.

The way GRUB has done this has always been a hack and has not always worked. Having said that, GRUB is the most featureful, convenient, and _reliable_ boot loader I have ever used, so I think they've done a good job. Bootstrapping a PC is hacky business, anyway.

Re:It is free for all region

[QuantumBeep]

You're functionally correct, but there is no spec. It's a pure de facto standard, not IBM fiat.

Another example of DRM fail

[Andorin]

From the article:

At least some occurrences of this are with software which writes a signature to the embedding area which hangs around even after uninstallation (even with one of those tools that tracks everything the installation process did and reverses it, I gather), so that you cannot uninstall and reinstall the application to defeat a trial period.

So once again DRM is fucking with peoples' abilities to use their computers. Except this particular bit of DRM doesn't just screw with Windows; it could potentially screw with every OS on your drive (or screw with your ability to access them, at any rate).

Yeah, it's not conventional DRM, but it's a form of DRM in that it restricts the user in some arbitrary way (and, I ought to add, breaks something else in the process... that too should be part of the definition of DRM).

Re:Another example of DRM fail

[howdotheydothat]

So a simple fixboot/fixmbr or a reinstall of GRUB would remove the aforementioned DRM?

Re:Another example of DRM fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but if somebody figured out which software used such DRM... Hypothetically they could get at that bit by comparing the overwritten GRUB to the normal GRUB, and then start their reverse-engineering hacks against the DRM portion since it's no longer hidden.

DRM that writes to the same spot every time without any checks sounds like something with a big "CRACK ME" target painted on it. Now its just a matter of time until figuring out which software does this.

Re:Another example of DRM fail

[couchslug]

"DRM that writes to the same spot every time without any checks sounds like something with a big "CRACK ME" target painted on it."

Good. The sooner it's cracked the sooner it may go out of fashion. :)

Re:Another example of DRM fail

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, it isn't really true DRM, it is just another way to hide the trial status so that you can't easily cheat out of the trial period by reinstalling the software.

Re:Another example of DRM fail

[mcgrew]

IMO DRM == malware. Most DRM is far more destructive than, say, the "stoned virus".

Re:Another example of DRM fail

[djdanlib]

Well, sort of yes, but that would remove your ability to run the DRM-protected software.

Not surprised

[Murdoch5]

Got to say this isn't surprising at all. Windows has never favored the dual boot setup. In the mind of Microsoft, there product should be the only one to touch the drive and thats it. Personally I run 2 dual boot setups. 1 on my notebook and 1 on my desktop. The amount of times that Windows has chosen to just over write grub and leave me with no way to get into Linux is amazing. What Microsoft should do to show there a team player is put code into the install to detect a grub install and then append the correct entry into the grub file to setup the dual boot.

I know this will very likely never happen but it would be a good step to be taken by Microsoft.

Re:Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

For that, the Windows installer would need to be able to read any file system format GRUB knows, so it can find the menu file.

Re:Not surprised

[RAMMS EIN]

``Got to say this isn't surprising at all. Windows has never favored the dual boot setup. In the mind of Microsoft, there product should be the only one to touch the drive and thats it.''

But they do have a bootloader. It even has a menu. Also, Windows isn't really the problem here, other than apparently allowing applications to write to disk sectors that don't belong to them. But then, *nix systems allow that, too, for programs that have write access to the block device; e.g. applications running as root.

Re:Not surprised

[Murdoch5]

I know your right on both accounts, but A) Windows should know enough to prevent it and B) The windows boot loader is HORRIBLY DESIGNED. I remember having to use it for skills Canada a few years ago and there is no easy way to use it. Now let me explain point A.

Windows is the kind of OS that has to be used by people who can't turn on the computer all the way up to the worlds best IT people. The wide spread of user skill is enough that Windows should be designed with a lock out sub system around the MBR. Now Linux is generally used by skill computer users, well at least if you don't use Ubuntu. Linux gives you all the access you can handle and expects you to know what to do with it. I highly highly doubt to many Linux users will take pity on you when you screw your MBR from the command line. The over all point that Windows is meant to be used by those who for lack of a better term can't use it means that it should lock access to the MBR at all costs.

The other thing it should do which I mention about is to detect grub and append it's own record into the grub menu. There is 0 reasons it can't do this and there is 0 harmful effects to Microsoft for adding this feature.

The root point over all is that there is NO acceptable reason to ever touch the MBR after the OS is installed. There is 0 reason, none, nota etc.... It should be left alone and given it's right to not be changed.

I've recently tried GRUB2

[elsJake]

Grub2 has a lot of nice features but it seems to be adding a lot of complexity into the equation , more than is required for some systems.
Thankfully they thought of renaming it rather than adding all that stuff to GRUB legacy , otherwise i would've started one of those Grub vs Lilo rants only renamed into Grub vs. Grub right here and now.

Re:I've recently tried GRUB2

[wisnoskij]

and this is not its only issue.
It has some multi hard drive issue (i think) that adds 20 seconds to my normally 6 second bootup time.

Legacy BIOS booting has always been broken

[alexhs]

blindly overwriting hard disk content between the MBR and the first partition destroying information already stored there

There's no allocation scheme nor some kind of magic number to identify the content in that zone, so there is no 'smart' way to write in that zone. You could check for zeroes, which is fine fine for a new disk, then ask the user if you find that the area has been previously written, but the user usually won't know and will only be confused.

The 'smart' thing to do is not only to not write in that area (as reported, GRUB stage 1.5 can be erased), but also to not write in the MBR as too many OSes will overwrite it (and therefore GRUB stage 1) on (re)installation.

I'm usually staying with the conventional "4 primary partitions that can be active" MBR, GRUB stage 1 in some Linux partition (usually a small /boot partition at the beginning of the disk to avoid most of the problems with old/buggy BIOSes), then directly stage2 from the partition instead of stage 1.5. However, the loading of stage 2 without stage 1.5 has been deprecated in GRUB2. IIRC it's because the block list needed was bigger than with the smaller GRUB1, and might not fit in the boot sector anymore.

Alas, that disposition can break on some old/buggy BIOSes but is much more resilient to software abuse (usually writing a standard boot sector and setting the active partition to the one where you installed GRUB fixes any such problems).

(I'm talking about GRUB stages from memory, feel free to correct me if I did some mistakes)

Malicious by definition?

[MrLint]

If these apps are writing outside the file system, and doing so in an undocumented fashion, is this not; in some sense, a definition of malicious activity?

Re:Malicious by definition?

[im_thatoneguy]

So what you're saying is that GRUB is a virus? It's writing there in an undocumented fashion as well.

They're all exploiting a no-rules no man's land. Without any regulation or standard you should assume there will inevitably be conflicts and collisions.

Re:Malicious by definition?

[MrLint]

Are you implying that GRUB, which is a bootloader, and whose code is available, is writing in the boot area in an undocumented fashion?

One would presume that a bootloader is supposed to write in the boot area. One is not likely to presume a userland app in a high level OS is writing in the boot area.

LILO is immune to this.

[John Hasler]

And yes, LILO is still supported and under development. LILO 23

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather use extlinux or syslinux.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[Threni]

Let's hope it's less complicated than the joke GRUB2 is. Seriously, I'm something of a noob to Linux, but I don't understand how the question `how do we make an app to configure which partition to boot into` is best answered with `use GRUB2`. How many files are involved? How are they combined? Why is the language so confusing? Why not provide an idiot mode so that people who just want to boot into this or that partition, especially after running this windows shite, or perhaps because they've installed Ubuntu to a USB key and the default action is to tell the local hard drive to boot from it (seriously). I don't get it.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[Beelzebud]

Just keep at it. Grub2 made little sense to me when I first started out with it, but once you get used to it, it's actually fairly nice. Just remember if you're trying to add any new OS to it that /etc/grub.d/40_custom is your friend. Add your OS to it, then update-grub, and it will be on the menu the next boot.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[X0563511]

... which is better than adding 3 lines to /boot/menu.list or /boot/grub.conf how?

I still see to fail why GRUB2 is a big deal (right now at least).

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[Nimey]

Blech. I don't miss having to re-run the thing every time I install a new kernel.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[John Hasler]

I don't understand why that's such a big deal.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Presumably it makes it easier to generate an automatically updated file, which is handy to have when you install a new kernel. It wasn't a pain before to update the grub.conf/menu.lst file, but this standardizes the interface.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[Nimey]

Because once in a great while I'd forget and have a non-bootable system. Plus it's an annoying extra step that Grub doesn't make me take, so long as the filenames were the same.

This was back when I used Debian 2.x and 3.0, and usually compiled my own kernels.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[Beelzebud]

The nice thing about GRUB2 is that it can support higher resolution images for the boot menu background. And honestly, you're still adding the exact same lines, it's just to a new file. There is also nothing hard about typing the command in to the console to build the new menu... It's really not a big deal.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[the_one(2)]

I really like one thing about GRUB2; you can add linux live-cds there:) I have a USB memory with ubuntu installed on it + live cds for the latest ubuntu version in the grub menu.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[rodgerd]

I failed to see what the big benefit of GRUB was in the first place. It adds a huge amount of complexity for standard Intel boxes, minimal benefits, and when it was first jammed into distros, regressed all sorts of use cases (such as booting from broken software RAIDs).

Much like the Linux audio subsystems, it's a tail of throwing out something that works for 90% of users, replacing it with something of dubious virtue, and then declaring the remaining problems too hard to solve and moving on to the Next Big Thing (GRUB 2 in this case), while giving you a pile of new and insane problems to deal with.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[RAMMS EIN]

``Much like the Linux audio subsystems, it's a tail of throwing out something that works for 90% of users, replacing it with something of dubious virtue''

Which, I agree with you, is a Bad Thing.

However, to provide a counterpoint, for me, GRUB was the successor to LILO. LILO always struck me as very fragile, and at least at the time wasn't very featureful. By contrast, GRUB is the most reliable and most convenient boot loader I've ever used, and I've used it to repair many a broken system (*cough* programs overwriting the MBR without asking *cough*). To me, GRUB was a great improvement, and all distros I've ever used also offered LILO as an alternative, which I have ended up using on some systems where GRUB wouldn't work. I don't know what you were using instead of GRUB, but, for me, distros picking up GRUB did not break anything (because I could always use LILO instead) and brought a lot of improvement.

This contrary to the audio subsystems story, where I was perfectly satisfied with OSS until I had to switch to ALSA because OSS didn't have a driver for my sound card, and I'm still now using ALSA. The switch to ALSA didn't break anything for me besides some programs I had configured to use OSS (and ALSA OSS emulation not working), but I know the story is different for other people. And PulseAudio, from what I hear, has been a disaster. I wouldn't know, as I haven't used it yet.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[Rogerborg]

You know, this "Yeah, feature-foo is hard to learn, but if you put the time in you'll come to love it" cognitive dissonance bullshit is exactly why Linux is and never will be ready for the desktop. And I say that from the perspective of an all-Ubuntu household.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[ScrewMaster]

"Yeah, feature-foo is hard to learn, but if you put the time in you'll come to love it"

Oh, I don't know ... other vendors get away with that too.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[John Hasler]

> LILO always struck me as very fragile...

Looks like Grub is pretty fragile, too. The fact is, pc booting is badly broken.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[Raenex]

The nice thing about GRUB2 is that it can support higher resolution images for the boot menu background.

Of all the features I'd be looking for in a boot loader, this is not one of them.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[tenco]

Just remember if you're trying to add any new OS to it that /etc/grub.d/40_custom is your friend. Add your OS to it, then update-grub, and it will be on the menu the next boot.

I couldn't find /etc/grub.d nor update-grub in grub's documentation. You sure this isn't some distribution specific bit?

From the grub doc (Node: Configuration):

GRUB is configured using `grub.cfg', usually located under `/boot/grub'.

(Node: Simple Configuration)

The program `grub-mkconfig' (*note Invoking grub-mkconfig::) generates `grub.cfg' files suitable for most cases.

(Node: Changes From Grub Legacy)

The configuration file is now written in something closer to a full scripting language: variables, conditionals, and loops are available.

So how does this make configuring grub easier?

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[X0563511]

I do that in GRUB... but in that case it involves copying off the kernel and initrd. Still, it's far from impossible.

It can also chainload to USB without issue.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[bingoUV]

You mean it is change for the sake of change (and a high-res image)?

Piss off the users who are already used to doing things a certain way, make them learn a different way. All this just to support a higher resolution image? And I doubt that higher resolution image is hindered by configuration data written in menu.lst / grub.conf. How does /etc/grub.d/40_custom help in the higher resolution image?

It's really not a big deal.

Why is it not a big deal? To make the user learn a new way, it has to be a big deal i.e. it should come with significant improvement in user experience.

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[drinkypoo]

I failed to see what the big benefit of GRUB was in the first place.

LI

Re:LILO is immune to this.

[bored]

I totally agree, as someone who used lilo as the "linux bootloader" (not installed in the MBR) and used the active partition bit to select OS's I rarely had issues. Even when installing windows etc. Getting linux to boot after a windows install is as simple as resetting the active flag. Grub on the other-hand has always been a PITA when configured this way, and recovering it, via a DVD boot has wasted countless hours with grub-install convincing it to rewrite itself correctly. Frankly, the only thing that Grub gives me, is the ability to install a new kernel without having to type "lilo" on the command prompt to recompute the chain information. While grub may be "easier" it doesn't seem nearly as robust.

Reinstall GRUB

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. It's not that hard. Get a boot CD, drop to a command prompt, install GRUB. If that's inconvenient, consider virtualizing one OS or the other. Say, virtualize Linux in Windows using free VMware Server.

Re:Reinstall GRUB

[basscomm]

Seriously. It's not that hard. Get a boot CD, drop to a command prompt, install GRUB. If that's inconvenient, consider virtualizing one OS or the other. Say, virtualize Linux in Windows using free VMware Server.

You and your grandmother likely have different definitions of "hard".

Re:Reinstall GRUB

[Daniel Dvorkin]

You and your grandmother likely have different definitions of "hard".

The stereotypical computer-illiterate grandmother isn't going to be doing any kind of multi-booting in the first place, so whatever GRUB might do to her computer, and how to fix it, is irrelevant.

Re:Reinstall GRUB

[couchslug]

"You and your grandmother likely have different definitions of "hard"."

As long as she's satisfied, I'll retain my definition.

Re:Reinstall GRUB

[qoa]

What about somebody who has dabbled over the years with several distros but still gets lost when stuff breaks and ends up at the grub menu with it spitting back command not found type errors? As an on-again off-again "user" if you can call me that of linux (I have several old retail copies of mandrake still, and burned copies of fedora core 1 and 2 I want to say?), I get completely lost in it.

About time...?

[Manip]

Isn't it about time we had the Linux, Windows, and OS X guys sit down and agree on a standard for booting into multiple Operating Systems that wasn't invented in the early 1990s? I mean, just create a VERY simply little standard everyone can agree on that simply allows boot loaders to be called.

I know, I know, insanely wishful thinking. Unfortunately there is no benefit for either Apple or Microsoft to ever agree to even the concept of multi-boot since it is against their respective business models. Maybe we should have a third party create the standard and then pressure Microsoft into signing up for it?

Re:About time...?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Unfortunately there is no benefit for either Apple or Microsoft to ever agree to even the concept of multi-boot since it is against their respective business models.

Um ... ever heard of Boot Camp? Apple not only "agrees" to multi-booting, they actively support it. Blame Microsoft for hostility to the concept all you want, but there's no reason to drag Apple into it.

Re:About time...?

[Beelzebud]

I've often wished for this as well. There is no excuse for not having some sort of multi-OS standard for booting.

Re:About time...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that what EFI is?

Re:About time...?

[philipmather]

I know, I know, insanely wishful thinking. Unfortunately there is no benefit for either Apple or Microsoft to ever agree to even the concept of multi-boot since it is against their respective business models. Maybe we should have a third party create the standard and then pressure Microsoft into signing up for it?

No wait! It fits perfectly with Microsoft's business model, I believe agreeing to a standard falls into the "Embrace" stage! Then in about 18 months they can extend it with a proprietary DRM system that fscks every other OS.

1. Embrace boot loader standard.
2. Extend boot loader standard with DRM.
3. Extinguish alternative OSes.
4. PROFIT!!!

Only those of us 31337 enough not to have Windows installed in the first place (or who can reinstall their boot loaders) will remain on Slashdot to bitch about M$ whilst Steve Job's umper lumpers will come up with a much sexier way to load their booters. Makes sense to me anyway.

Back to plot for a moment... sounds like someone wasn't drinking the kool-aid when they designed GRUB 2 frankly. It might be epic fail for applications to go fiddling in un-partitioned areas but it's still regular fail for the boot loader to be off doing the same without it being a well understood convention like the boot sector.

What happens when you want to back it up? Does dumping the MBR or taking a snapshot of the partitions capture this extra info or am I missing something?

Re:About time...?

[cgenman]

Can I install Boot Camp to my Dell to dual-boot Linux and Windows? Boot Camp is not an external bootloader. It's a loader within the OSX world that will let you fork off and run windows instead of OSX. Unfortunately, it's not a standard for dual or multi-booting: it's a way of adding features within OSX.

Re:About time...?

[paxswill]

Boot camp is not what we want. Boot camp does not support Linux well, and if you have more than one non OS X partition, it labels them all as 'Windows'. rEFIt is a nice EFE/Mac bootloader. Also, if we're saying Boot Camp counts, bootcgf/boot.ini offers close functionality (not cross OS family, but about as extensive as Boot Camp).

Re:About time...?

[Nimey]

Boot Camp is sub-optimal in that you can only have one non-OSX partition (unless there's something I missed?), so if you want to triple-boot OSX, Windows, and FreeBSD you're out of luck unless you use some third-party tool, or (as I did) run Wubi from Windows.

Re:About time...?

[RAMMS EIN]

``Isn't it about time we had the Linux, Windows, and OS X guys sit down and agree on a standard for booting into multiple Operating Systems''

GRUB actually did invent and document a proposed standard: Multiboot.
Alas, last I checked, none of Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD implemented it.

Re:About time...?

[cpghost]

Yes, but Multiboot is supported (required) by modern microkernels like, say, from the L4 family.

Re:About time...?

[mcgrew]

Isn't it about time we had the Linux, Windows, and OS X guys sit down and agree on a standard for booting into multiple Operating Systems that wasn't invented in the early 1990s?

The problem is Microsoft. They don't want you booting into anything but Windows 7. Every other OS has easy ways to dual boot, Microsoft doesn't, and for a very good reason.

Bootloaders are un-necessary

[inode_buddha]

They are great to have, much more convenient. But not strictly required due to the way that hardware *is*. I run a straight linux box. And the last I checked, you could "dd" the kernel image directly to the first bootable device, usually /dev/hda or /dev/sda, and it would boot. You do it as an entire block, and then "dd" the entire root FS onto the next disk block. So that the kernel can find it. If it doesn't fly then you get a panic message about "Root FS not found" along with a complete halt. It will sit there and wait for a kernel cmdline. Alternatively, you can set a word in ramdisk via "rdev" and tell the kernel where to find it. It's in the "howto's".

Re:Bootloaders are un-necessary

[RAMMS EIN]

``They are great to have, much more convenient. But not strictly required due to the way that hardware *is*. I run a straight linux box. And the last I checked, you could "dd" the kernel image directly to the first bootable device, usually /dev/hda or /dev/sda, and it would boot.''

That's really because Linux contains a (primitive) boot loader.

FLEXnet, Adobe's rootkit

[Animats]

The big headache is FLEXnet, Adobe's "license manager". It's a specialized rootkit that gives the remote licensing system access to the machine at a low level. Which is why it tends to break things a Windows application shouldn't be able to break. On Windows, it runs a background service and contacts a remote server frequently, sending undocumented information to the remote server and accepting update commands to change software already on the computer.

FLEXnet is the successor to FlexLM, a licensing system from the 1980s. It started as a UNIX product. It's been owned at various times by Highland, Globetrotter, Macrovision, and Thoma Cressey Bravo. It was unreliable in the 1990s, and the passage of time does not seem to have improved things.

In general, it's best to avoid buying Adobe products which install the FLEXnet license server.

Re:FLEXnet, Adobe's rootkit

[neuro-commando]

Indeed, I've also heard of other Adobe products doing similar things to GRUB, though I believe they somehow ended up overwriting it altogether. I don't remember the specifics, but it happened to me once. True, no big deal, I popped in Super Grub Disk and repaired my MBR, but its the fact that Adobe has no business there, coupled with the fact that it's annoying which really gets to me.

Re:FLEXnet, Adobe's rootkit

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like PC Angel isn't much better.

Re:who the fuck would dual boot a server?

[maximander]

Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers.

"built his house upon the sand"

[alizard]

The whole point behind VMs is to make the host as reliable and stable as possible and put the flakier OS and software in a VM so when it crashes and burns, all one has to do is start the VM, not try to rebuild file structures and apps from scratch. Your post suggests you're not quite clear on the concept.

Unless you honestly believe that "Son of Vista" is more reliable and stable than Linux. In which case, I recommend you get help from a competent mental health professional.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be presumptuous.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Beelzebud]

For desktop usage, Win7 is most definitely just as stable as Linux. I say this from experience too, and not out of my ass.

I have 1 PC that is Arch Linux full time, being used as a media server, and the other dual boots Win7 and Arch. Win7 is only there for gaming at this point, but stability is not an issue whatsoever.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[jedidiah]

> Time to grow up.

Grown up people usually go for "stability" over the "shiny stuff".

The "grown up" approach is infact to leave Windows in the VM.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[jedidiah]

"stability" hasn't been the main problem for a long time. The main problem with WinDOS is still malware.

Is there some sort of Win-Neuter application? It wouldn't be so much Windows Lite as much as it would lock down Windows to the point where it was trivially "secure".

A sort of "chastity belt" for Windows running on bare metal would be a handy thing.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Skal Tura]

In my experience on desktop Ubuntu is by leaps and bounds flakier than Win7.

I've been using Ubuntu solely for a month now, and i absolutely hate the memory leaks, insane ram usage for some applications, causing jiggery sounds, lagging mouse etc.

Stable otherwise yes, but unusable unless software is restarted every couple of days. Any heavy high IO activity causes jittery sound & laggy mouse.

None of those problems exists under windows, plus under windows the rare occurence i want to play something i can, nevermind many of the usability features (Such as 100% WORKING clipboard, many shortcuts etc.) which simply don't exist yet in the linux world.

And before you go and discredit me: I simply like to get work done as fast & efficiently as possible... This is quite an must when you maintain the amount of servers i do and your living depends on it.

If i want stable as in about never crashes: Yes, Linux by all means. If i want to get work done efficiently (especially coding): Windows, PLEASE NOW ASAP! If i want to do any entertainment at all on my computer: It's windows again.

I try linux as primary desktop system every couple of years, and have been forgiving a lot of things. But, last time it was more expensive too: Buying crossover office license, transgaming license, couple other misc. licenses etc. and i burnt 400€ within couple days just to those, and yet couldn't get work done as nothing worked as advertised. (Oh, OpenOffice couldn't handle the rather simple but large excel sheets i used back then). I always get back to windows. No amount of Linux advocacy

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Skal Tura]

grown up people also appreciate efficient working, getting things simply done in as simple manner as possible.

The "grown up" approach is infact run Windows primarily, and leave the inefficient sutff in the VM.

(Just check how well Ubuntus clipboard works between FFOX, Putty, Terminal, GEdit, Openoffice..., or the new usability shortcuts in W7, among a plethora of other tiny usability features which end up saving you tremendous amount of time.)

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Skal Tura]

The "malware problem" is avoided 99.5% very efficiently: Don't click yes on everything.
Rest of the 0.5%? Tought luck Holmes, time to boot up Spybot, go for coffee and come back to a clean system.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Jerry]

That's because Linux is 100% as vulnerable to ... Linux uses security by "obscurity"...

You really have things backwards. Linux source code is GPL freely available for anyone to inspect. Windows source is proprietary and secret, which Gates testified before Congress was necessary because it was a national resource that should be kept secret for security reasons ... until Gates gave the Chinese copies of the XP source because it was their price for Microsoft to do business in China. So, it is Microsoft that practices "security by obscurity".

Actual security? The 1,000,000 + zombies that are appearing on the giant bot farms discovered every so often are compromised Windows boxes, not Linux or Mac OS X boxes. Ballmer himself put the Linux desktop market share at around 10% and called Linux a greater competitive threat than Apple. With that percentage and, according to you Linux is equally as vulnerable, then why isn't 100,000 of those zombies Linux boxes?

And, if Linux is so easy to compromise then why did professional hackers spend more than 6 months last year just to capture only 700 Linux boxes using brute force password cracking when, according to you, all they had to do was spend a day or two to lure a few hundred thousand Linux users to their porn site honey pot?

Morons are those who drink Microsoft's Kool-aide and become brainless human zombies chanting MS Technical Evangelists astroturf postings as if they are fact.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[ushering05401]

I should also mention that your Ubuntu example is insulting.

If you can't get Linux to bend to your will with a couple custom aliases you aren't doing it right.

Yeah, great, you wanted to download Shuttleworth's folly and have it do great things for you. Well, grow the fuck up. It is a computer system. Customize it.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[ToasterMonkey]

Grown up people usually go for "stability" over the "shiny stuff".

It is 2010, grown adults play video games, this has been true for decades now. Also, games are more stable in Windows, so I'm not sure where this is going...

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you comparing stock Linux to Windows? Shouldn't the real comparison be to Windows Server? The parent was obviously talking about a desktop system, not a hardened server.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[ZosX]

Yeah...the clipboard is so basic. Linux will never be a desktop OS until the clipboard works.

What's interesting is that android will soon become the dominant end user linux experience. Linux has filled several niches quite admirably. The desktop is certainly not one of them.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[laurelraven]

Yes, because 99% of all computer users want to study how to use every last little bit so they can make it as efficient as possible. Oh, wait...no, actually, 99% of users want things to just work out of the box and don't care one bit about your nerd rage that your way is superior. Computers are tools to get a job done...those who love to customize them (myself included), don't mind going through what you talk about. Most people just want their computer to help them get their job done, and won't bother if it gets in their way until they take the time to "customize it". And Windows, 7 especially, does just that...gives people the tools to do their work, then gets out of their way. Looks like Microsoft finally listened to their customers.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Alex Belits]

Yeah...the clipboard is so basic. Linux will never be a desktop OS until the clipboard works.

Except that it does.

Microsoft marketing people sift through bug lists and newbie forums fishing for plausible "problems" they supposedly have with Linux, but usually don't even realize what is being discussed.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[sumdumass]

Actually, 99.5% is a little high. Try something closer to 80%.

And yes, I'm speaking from the experience of cleaning systems where windows has Zero day vulnerabilities recently discussed here where simply going to an infected website was enough not to mention programs masquerading as legitimate installed programs because the legitimate programs draws it's window frames from IE and it's almost identical when it pops up saying "infection found, do you want to delete it". and lets not mention the recent network solutions app infections recently discussed here too.

We have a few sites that all web access is audited with log trails that even reveal what is types into word processors (the owners are anal about security and yes, working there is hell too). We tracked a few infections back to the ads served on some legitimate sites where the system was infected before the user had a chance at clicking anything. Of course our AV caught the infections but not before the winsock stack got hosed and we needed to reset it with the netsh command. And I stress again, this was with no user interaction other then going to a legitimate website for official work use as our tracking software showed. And this was also only a couple of weeks ago.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Alex Belits]

Do you believe the moon landings were faked?

No. Now shut up.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Bing Tsher E]

It's sort of unfortunate that you were so selective in what you quoted from the AC.

With that low UID, surely you understand what s/he was saying. 'Shut up' seems like kind of a nervous response.

Part of what you snipped:

There is no such thing as a paid MS shill. If there was, which there isn't, they certainly wouldn't care about Slashdot. Slashdot hasn't been a very relevant tech discussion forum for the last 8 years.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[toriver]

Nonsense, games are more stable on consoles. I bought Fallout 3 for PS3 on sale since the PC version I bought on Steam consistently froze after a scant few minutes of play. Should I as an end consumer really need to dig into minutiae of Windows settings to try and tweak it enough for a game to run properly? I thought we had left the bad old days behind us.

Repeat after me: PCs for surfing and work, consoles for games.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Achromatic1978]

And, if Linux is so easy to compromise then why did professional hackers spend more than 6 months last year just to capture only 700 Linux boxes using brute force password cracking when, according to you, all they had to do was spend a day or two to lure a few hundred thousand Linux users to their porn site honey pot?

LMAO. So some guy came up with a list of 700 compromised Linux boxes in six months, and that was the sum total of all exploited Linux boxes? LMAO. Just wow.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[allaunjsilverfox2]

Really? This NEVER happens in windows? As in statically, 100% of the cases of Windows ® use, it never happens? That my friend, is a incredibly flawed study. I would enjoy seeing the sources you used! Me personally, I experiance these problems a large portion of the time. But that is due to a combination of overheating hardware and memory leaking plugins in firefox.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Anonymous Coward]

> I simply like to get work done as fast & efficiently as possible

yet you're fine with hunting for printer drivers, and software updates and the correct license number for the office installed on the hd that has died, while you can't stand desktop linux? suuuure.

Nothing short of dd makes linux lag and that's a bug that has surfaced only lately. Parent is trolling.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[ultranova]

For desktop usage, Win7 is most definitely just as stable as Linux. I say this from experience too, and not out of my ass.

Maybe. It's hard to say for sure, since most Linux distros it easy to run lots of programs at once, while Windows doesn't - no virtual desktops, taskbar can only take a few running programs before spilling into multi-line, etc.

Or did you mean they're both stable when used as glorified typewriters? Of course they are, and so is Win95.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[marcello_dl]

> Yeah...the clipboard is so basic. Linux will never be a desktop OS until the clipboard works.

LOL

parent comment selected and pasted here on my desktop linux sidux, which also features a working klipper by default.

on mac and win i always miss xorg way of select/paste using the mouse.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Kalriath]

Huh. In my experience, Fallout 3 freezes constantly on the PS3, not the PC.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[ultranova]

I bought Fallout 3 for PS3 on sale since the PC version I bought on Steam consistently froze after a scant few minutes of play. Should I as an end consumer really need to dig into minutiae of Windows settings to try and tweak it enough for a game to run properly?

This has nothing to do with Windows and is a Fallout 3 bug. And no, a mere consumer couldn't figure it out, so he'll end up buying the same thing twice.

I thought we had left the bad old days behind us.

"Bad old days" return whenever there's some new development in hardware. The use of protected mode - first through DOS extenders and later through pmode OS freed us from messing around with DOS's memory types, but then 3D accelerator cards arrived, with their proprietary APIs of course. Now everyone uses Direct3D or OpenGL, but multi-core has arrived, forcing games to switch to parallel execution, and bugs result during transition. Compute shaders - using the 3D accelerator as a math co-processor - is the newest fad; we'll see what new problems arise from there.

Repeat after me: PCs for surfing and work, consoles for games.

Consoles are for people who's Google-Fu is weak.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why i see blue screens on my linux laptop all the time... oh wait that's my windows 7 laptop that as spent more time with asus tech support than with me... sorry.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Nursie]

I have had bluescreens in Win 7.

Not sure why, usually seems to have happened when running Google Chrome. Either way there are some areas in which Win 7 is still lacking I think.

That said, I get the occasional kernel panic in linux too!

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[trickyD1ck]

Who needs virtual desktops when you can have multiple monitors? Too bad linux does not support them out of box (i.e., without tricking with command prompt)

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Lusa]

I was going to write a lot more but it can be summed up with this: I can't decide if you are trolling or something else. Did you really buy licences for products that have free trials without trying them out first to see if they were suitable?

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[calzakk]

If most Linux users logged in as root, ran everything as root, and never used less privileged accounts (through ignorance or through choice), then Linux viruses would be just as prevalent as Windows viruses. (In fact, I doubt Linux would be as prevalent as it is if that were the case!)

I use Windows 7. IMHO it's Microsoft's best work to date. My account isn't an Administrator account, so if I ever ran malicious software there's limits to the damage it could do. Yeah, occasionally I have to enter the Admin's password, just like a Linux user sometimes has to. This is how Windows should be used, it's an educational issue. (Is it correct to assume that the average Windows user's IQ is probably less than the average Linux user's? Controversial and unrelated, perhaps, but it's a just a theory.)

Morons are those who slag Microsoft just because they can. Time to grow up. Windows has its place, and so does Linux. They're tools, both have pros, both have cons, don't get so worked up about it.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[ScrewMaster]

There is no such thing as a paid MS shill. If there was, which there isn't, they certainly wouldn't care about Slashdot.

Of course, if there were, that's exactly what they would say.

Do you believe the moon landings were faked?

No. Now shut up.

My sentiments exactly.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[ultranova]

Who needs virtual desktops when you can have multiple monitors?

I usually use 12 virtual desktops on Linux. Not only would the cost be prohibitive, as would the power and space requirements, but there's no way to connect them all to a single PC.

Too bad linux does not support them out of box (i.e., without tricking with command prompt)

But it does support virtual desktops. Guess which one is more useful for the majority of users?

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Anonymous Coward]

Bro, that's probably the total number of boxes running Linux.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Risen888]

grown up people also appreciate efficient working, getting things simply done in as simple manner as possible.

You are silly. There is nothing efficient about a system that requires the additional overhead of antivirus protection. Nothing. Ever. Game over.

Just check how well Ubuntus clipboard works between FFOX, Putty, Terminal, GEdit, Openoffice

Are you kidding me? The Windows clipboard is dodgy as hell even between different sessions of Office! And god forbid you're trying to run anything else! Don't come talk to me about clipboard management.

the new usability shortcuts in W7... are a direct ripoff of KDE. We have had this stuff for literally years.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Curtman]

Who needs virtual desktops when you can have multiple monitors? Too bad linux does not support them out of box (i.e., without tricking with command prompt)

Welcome to the future. (5 years ago)

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[thegarbz]

With that percentage and, according to you Linux is equally as vulnerable, then why isn't 100,000 of those zombies Linux boxes?

Basic economics my friend. Utilising exploits to create a botnet is not something your average niche market can adapt to. There's noting of interest there. A virus or trojan requires critical mass to get off the ground. Virus writers don't target Linux or OSX simply because there's no guarantee of spread in an already difficult to crack market.

You're writing a virus. You need a specific percentage of a network infected to stay ahead of the game and keep a self sustaining infestation spreading. Do you therefore target 90% of the population, or do you target 10%? Do you target a demographic of stupid users likely to end up infected by accident, or do you target the technical elite who make up most of the 10% of Linux users out there? If you selected the Linux option of either of these, please PLEASE get into the virus writing business. Because if we had more stupid people fighting those odds then there'd probably be less viruses out there that are actually worth worrying about.

Using exploits as a metric of security is outright silly because it ignores the economics of it all. Sure SELinux provides excellent security to an already very good system, the clusterfuck of applications people use provides great security by obscurity since you're never guaranteed that your target machine will have the entry vector used by your virus or trojen, but at the same token it's simply not viable to target 10% of computers when aiming for a mass exploit. Though I guess you could try and make it hip and trendy and sell the exploit through the app store. I'm sure that niche market exists.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[ZosX]

Uh. Can I copy and paste between any application in linux? Oh wait. I can't? In windows I can copy and paste almost anything (within certain limits). MacOS too. I'm sure certain things work, between certain applications (text certainly does), but windows is far more seamless. Copy and paste is pretty basic functionality. Until the linux people work towards some sort of common desktop platform, linux will always remain the highly fragmented stew of competing desktop environments it is now, and yes I realize that linux is just the kernel, not the OS, but hey, I digress.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[ZosX]

Yeah...lets see you copy and paste something other than text. I mean something complex....like a vector graphic from inkscape. And paste it anywhere, like into a word processor, like open offic?. I just took a vector from illustrator and dumped it into open office. In fact, I can even just drag and drop it. Can you do that in linux? Last I knew, such functionality didn't really exist yet because it didn't understand enough about different data types.

Sure copy and paste works within an application just fine, but across apps (where you kind of really want it to work) is still pretty broken if you ask me.

Re:"built his house upon the sand"

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the same feeling on Windows: It does many things ok, but as a general use computer it lacks a lot. Minor examples include copy-paste that doesn't require me to twist my left hand to weird positions or require half a dozen extra clicks. Select + middle-click is pretty damn nice...

Simple case of arrogant and lazy programmers

[meerling]

They are trying to outsmart the os and other programs by using non-standard areas for some of their code without bothering to check if something else is already using it.
Ironically I saw a lot of this during the switchover to win95.
The stupidly assume that if their test machine isn't using that chunk of drive, nothing else does either, at any time, ever.
You'd be shocked at how many people got their MBRs blown out because of that kind of stupidity.

Well, it's been about 15 years, so there's a whole new crop of arrogant lazy s.o.b.s out there that have to learn that the computer is a shared environment.

Turbo Tax Did It First

[McD]

We've been down this road before. In 2003, Intuit's Turbo Tax (for tax year 2002) pulled the same stunt, indiscriminately overwriting sectors at the beginning of the disk (outside any partition) and trashing people's bootloaders.

All in the futile pursuit of DRM. That's reason enough for me to use Tax Cut, instead, every year since.

Re:Turbo Tax Did It First

[3vi1]

TurboTax was the first thing that came to my mind too. I also switched to Tax Cut that year, for the exact same reason - and I've never regretted it.

I think grub should write its data in allocated space, just as a matter of self-preservation. But, we should also avoid products that trample over bootloaders in the name of DRM.

No surprise

[koan]

That sort of thing is SOP for HP and Adobe lately, and certain video game manufacturers.

a simple rule

[Anonymous Coward]

Your software has NO business writing to the MBR. EVER... The MBR and the installation of device drivers should be reserved for *legitimate* use, such as providing support for hardware, or multibooting another OS. This is yet another reason not to trust proprietary software. The bottom line is this: you do not know how the end-user has configured his machine. Therefore you should not fsck with unnecessary portions of the system that are not intended to be routinely modified.

This sounds vaguely familiar

[countertrolling]

It brings up some recollection of one of those accounting programs from a few years back, Quicken? TurboTax?

Getting back to them...

[OneAhead]

I'm feeling very tempted to go on the forum of some expensive proprietary software that uses Adobe FlexNet DRM and go 'hey guys, listen up: there's this neat operating system "Debian/Ubuntu Linux", and after installing it, I could re-install after the trial period expired and keep on using it.'

meh

[kramulous]

I have a system at home that's dual boot ... I like to game occasionally. But don't make me choose. My professional career depends on Linux and I need it for productivity.

I realise that I could easily do a search to work out what is going wrong and fix it, but, really I couldn't be fucked spending time on it. I (like many others) could spend that time doing other things.

This is in Microsoft's best interest to make sure that applications that run on their OS fix this.

Re:meh

[X0563511]

If your only reason for Windows is to game, then you don't need to worry about FLEXNet or any of these other "products"

Re:meh

[dbIII]

Actually gaming is about the only reason to use a desktop version of MS Windows on real hardware.
For everything else we may be better off consigning the entire fetid swamp to a virtual machine and let it do whatever it wants to its virtual disk. I've even had to do that to get some badly behaved software to run on a Win7 box by putting WinXP on a VM.
Don't get me wrong, I like the way MS is cleaning up their act. However add a few applications and the system still turns into a fetid swamp.

Re:meh

[bill_mcgonigle]

Your comment wins the discussion. Dual-booting was for expensive systems before hardware virt support. You can even share the graphics adapter to the guest these days. There are few enough cases for raw dual-booting these days that having a second system makes more sense most of the time it's actually required.

Nothing new

[eggman9713]

This has been a problem with older versions of Dreamweaver. As part of the copy protection, it would write data to the space between the MBR and the first partition. Steve Gibson talked about it on Security Now episode 132 (circa 2008) when discussing how this issue fubar'd TrueCrypt (unless you had a recovery CD) just after it came out with its whole-disk encryption ability.

Flexlm rant

[dbIII]

Flexlm is about as evil a piece of software I've ever seen. It only exists to punish the innocent that have actually paid for the licence and to fleece the software vendors that have paid for this bit of rubbish that is easier to circumvent than it is to use. Due to compatibility bugs I'm still running a fucking RedHat7.2 machine just to feed the other Centos5 machines a licence - so one machine doing nothing but burning electricity and handing out a licence. Running it in a VM would of course void the licence, as would one of the many simple workarounds to disable flexlm.
A later MS Windows version I had the misfortune to use had a Y2K bug in 2008! With an update our perpetual licences were marked as expired in 2000. It took two weeks to get a fix out of Macrovision.

Re:Flexlm rant

[Anonymous Coward]

I met a problem with MATLAB's licencing shit, where it two weeks after installing would refuse to boot. The reason? The machine have two ethernet cards, and I used eth0. As it could not run "ifconfig" and grep the output to find the MAC of eth0, it just plainly refused to start.

Mathworks customer support was pretty nice though, and provided me with a hack. Especially after I said "now I understand why none of my friends payed for this shit"...

But then I upgraded to 64 bit Linux, and their installer had more tricks for discovering that it was a 64-bit arch than I had tricks to tell it otherwise. Including their own, documented flag "install arch X blindly".

OTOH, pylab and friends are pretty nice, too...

Re:Flexlm rant

[drinkypoo]

Is FLEXNet any more effective than Flexlm was? I've seen it repeatedly defeated on both Windows and Solaris.

Re:Flexlm rant

[dbIII]

I think the Y2K bug in 2008 was in FLEXNet. That's even more embarrassing than the Zune leap year problem and sums up the "quality" of their software and shows how much they are lacking in testing.

these apps should flash your BIOS instead

[pikine]

Why limit your imagination at the boot loader? It is my opinion that these Windows applications should flash your BIOS instead of screwing with master boot record for the purpose of copy protection. That way, if they mess up, the computer won't even power up. ;-)

Re:these apps should flash your BIOS instead

[mysidia]

I'm waiting for medical nanobots that covertly plant little sequence's in the patient's DNA during product activation, in order to ensure you can't share your anti-cancer nanonites with anyone else.

The 23rd pair of chromosomes is the perfect place to stash things where the user will never notice, right? and who cares if random things get corrupted there, not like anyone puts anything useful in chromosome 46, anyways, right?

Only a story because it's clobbered by DRM

[billcopc]

I have two takes on this. On one hand, why the hell are we relying in data written in an unallocated portion of the disk ? (yes I know how booting works). On the other, what makes these idiotic DRM freaks believe they have any right to trample all over that portion of the disk ?

The way I see it, both parties are doing it wrong. I'm leaning in favor of Grub, only because it actually has a noble purpose unlike the DRM, but that doesn't exonerate it of wrongdoing. If Grub is going to evolve into something more than just a simple bootloader, then maybe it's time it got a partition for itself. I'm perfectly cool with it having a mini recovery system vibe going on, but when you blindly sneak things into the filesystem equivalent of "No Man's Land", sooner or later something's going to break.

Or maybe this is a sign that we need to start pushing more towards a universal BIOS-based bootloader, and frankly I'm amazed we even got this far without one. I can think of very few non-PC platforms that don't have an on-chip bootloader.

Re:Only a story because it's clobbered by DRM

[Todd Knarr]

A BIOS-based bootloader has problems. The most basic one's the one that makes LILO such a pain: locating the second-stage boot file (eg. the Linux kernel itself, or the NT system loader). You either have to be able to interpret all possible boot filesystems well enough to locate and read a file on them (the GRUB method), or you need to have a list of what sectors need to be read in for each bootable OS (the LILO method). The problem with the LILO method is that anything that touchs the boot files and might result in them moving requires rebuilding the bootloader sector list. Forget to do that and your system may become unbootable, or worse may still be bootable but have loaded corrupted data as kernel code. The GRUB method means no rebuilding the boot information, but it requires the ability to update the boot software to support new filesystems as they come into use. In day-to-day use I think the GRUB method causes fewer headaches.

I think we just ought to make official the unspoken convention: the area outside of any partition (ie. the boot sector and the unallocated space between the boot sector and the start of the first partition) belongs to only two things, the partition table and the boot loader. OSes should concern themselves only with the area within the partitions. The only exception to that should be the OS-provided partitioning and boot-loader support tools, and those only if the OS's partitioning software and boot loader are actually being used. Applications should not be permitted to write to raw disk at all unless they're explicitly being run as administrator, and shouldn't be doing so even if running as administrator unless they're intended to modify boot and partition information.

Re:

[clint999]

Don't run those apps as administrator. Administrator privileges are needed for raw disk access.

OMG!

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that if we write to a piece of storage (memory, hard disk, whatever) without allocating it through the established mechanisms, that some other program could mistakenly overwrite our data? That's so unfair! (Bonus points for somehow blaming Microsoft for this, even though their bootblock/partition table spec has been documented in various ways for almost 30 years).

Microsoft marketing at work

[Alex Belits]

Please look at all those Windows defenders.

They make excuses for, of all thins:

1. DRM.
2. Piece of software that uses space between first sector and the end of the first cylinder for no other purpose than obfuscation.

and attack

1. Bootloader.
2. Piece of software that follows the convention used by all bootloaders everywhere since people started using multiple filesystems on a x86-based computer.

What kind of person, other than Microsoft astroturfer or complete moron would do such a thing?

Re:Microsoft marketing at work

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of person, other than Microsoft astroturfer or complete moron would do such a thing?

A sane person. Too bad you'll never get to feel like one. Continue your anti-ms trolling...

Re:Microsoft marketing at work

[ScrewMaster]

What kind of person, other than Microsoft astroturfer or complete moron would do such a thing?

A sane person. Too bad you'll never get to feel like one. Continue your anti-ms trolling...

You're the fruitcake. He wasn't trolling against Microsoft per se (although it's kind of hard to troll when discussing a company that has such a history unethical and criminal behavior) he was making a statement to the effect that "certain software vendors have their collective crania firmly planted on the far side of their anal sphincters." And that's true. Stay the hell out of the boot area. It's bad enough that apps have to phone home just to be permitted to run: now they have to write to the boot sectors too?

What the hell.

Re:Microsoft marketing at work

[mcgrew]

Would someone who DOESN'T work for Microsoft please mod the above comment? Because a) it is by no metric a troll, and b) is 100% accurate.

Microsoft is in the wrong here, not GRUB.

HP restore partition

[waztub]

On my HP laptop, whenever I enter the restore partition software screen by hitting F11 on the BIOS screen, it resets the boot partition to the Windows loader.
No need to actually tell the restoration software to do anything, you can just enter it and exit straight away; it simply removes any bootloader installed automatically with no confirmation beforehand.

I actually found this "feature" useful when I wanted to remove a Linux installation gone bad, as it saved me the trouble of restoring the Windows bootloader.

Nevertheless, this is outrageous.

Not open to discussion?

[ratboy666]

LILO put the blocks addresses of the boot file into the boot loader. Of course, this has two major problems:

1 - Every time the boot file is updated, the boot loader needed to be updated. A simple command sufficed. But this problem absolutely PAILED in the face of the second issue...
2 - The boot file was limited in size, Only a fixed number of addresses could be coded into the boot file. But, this problem was partially "fixed" by the third issue:
3 - (I did two MAJOR problems, this is a minor issue). The boot loader operates in REAL mode on the x86. As a result, the code must load under 640K. But, since the boot file is of limited size ANYWAY, this one really didn't matter so much.

Of course, since the "MBR loader" is under 1 sector (the forced jump, checksum, and primary partition areas do take space, and these are BIOS-checked), there really isn't even room for a device driver. This code is pretty much forced to work in real-mode, but that's actually a good thing -- it can make use of BIOS interrupts for the disc handling. But...

4 - The boot is limited to a BIOS reachable (disc geometry) region. That is why some OSs MUST be loaded into the first 528MB (or so, it's really been a while since I've looked at this crap, sue me if the actual is different) region.

Now, different OSs attempt to get around these limitations in different ways. A boot loader can chain to a partition-specific boot loader, which serves to "push" the issues. Some OSs (cough, DOS, cough) simply force the OS image to be contiguous and the first thing in a partition. But, users don't (generally) WANT to be bothered with these issues. Where the OS is physically resident, HOW it loads, and how to keep its size within constraints. Linux can be built with built-in drivers, minimal drivers, etc. Using many different file systems...

So, GRUB attempts to address these issues. If you think you can do better (and, from your fairly arrogant tone, I think you do think so), have at it.

Re:Not open to discussion?

[Dahamma]

Eh, I didn't remotely say "boot loaders aren't open for discussion", my quote was "these facts are not open to discussion". As in, the two very simple facts that I stated in reply to the OP's comment of:

There is only 446 bytes available in the MBR. That's insufficient for code that can read a filesystem to find the 2nd stage image."

All I stated was (direct quotes):

1) "It's a fact that the PC BIOS reads the MBR to start the boot process"

2) "the FreeBSD menu system also loads out of a secondary location"

Anything incorrect about those as stated? (without reading anything else into them, as you seem to have done) And given those very limited assertions I don't really think the tone was arrogant, just slightly annoyed that people were posting untrue statements without verifying them.

Anyway, to the rest of the boot loader discussion that is very open... :)

GRUB 1 aka "GRUB Legacy" (which is in fact still used more than "GRUB 2") can work in one of 2 ways: use a "stage 1.5" located just after the MBR, which then boots stage 2 (which I imagine can cause the same issues as with GRUB2) or boot stage 2 directly (stage 2 can be located anywhere, and is usually on a real partition).

I (like many posters to this story, I see) still think it's bad practice for ANY program to use an unparitioned location to store data - whether it's a boot loader, AV software, or DRM scheme. It's like storing vital files in "/tmp" and being surprised when they are deleted.

As some others have pointed out, there is "some convention" for boot loaders to do this, but clearly not enough convention to keep their software from breaking, and they share some of the blame for that.

Grub (GHB) is really stupid here.

[rdebath]

Personally, I don't like either the GNU Hurd Bootloader or the GPT partition table. The first is far too complex and the second is badly committee botched. Personally I can't remember the last time I actually needed multi-boot capability anyway, I always use virtual machines now. The last time I got close was testing drivers support for various versions of windows during the recent Vista fiasco, I used multiple disk drives for that.

My preferred Linux partitioning tool is LVM with lilo as the booter. Yes, that is LVM directly on the hard drive, no partition table no GPT; I don't need them and don't want them, they're just one more thing to cause bugs. Lilo is similar, though really Lilo still does too much, but at least unlike grub it doesn't get all pissy and chuck it's toys out of the pram when it can't find it's super secret hiding place.

*DMZ*: make a sub-LAN, with SACRIFICIAL machines.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that we know how *murderous* of rights they are
( there's a difference between hearing *about* DRM, and
finding out *its methods* )

we know we have to make *sacrificial* machines, that have nothing but
MS-Windows trojan
Adobe very-useful-trojans
whatever else needs to be in MS-Windows
( Dragon Naturally Speaking,
MS-Office for compatibility with other businesses,
etc )

and make certain our confidential/important information never touches those machines,
or, where it has to be on those machines to work with it,
make certain it is on it only for the work-duration.

( remember when MS implemented a system that would inform MS of every term you used to search your system with?
AND where that search "hit"?
How many laws about confidenciality were broken in places running MS-Windows, *criminally*, like
Hospitals ( search: "Joe Smith" aids; hit in file SSN:1234567-DOB:235423-ADDR:2GornWoodyCr )
Police ( search reported to MS: "Joe Smith" assault; hit in file HateCrimes-9000 )
Gov't ( all the SSN/tax info MS must have harvested through that OS-search-info )

IOW, they are PR, marketing-specific, videography-specific, photo/A/V specific, etc.

Now we know: now we understand how we already are existing in the "containment device" they set for us,
now we know how to limit our rights being eradicated utterly,
in the progression of this "arrangement".

Don't be the frog that remained in the heating pot!

IF you want to have rights, ANY rights, in future.

( remember what the Jews said when the Nazis kept incrementing the restrictive laws!
"Oh: it's Just One More Thing".
remember what the Jews said when the Nazis added the rule "Jews are not allowed to go anywhere anymore"...
"We're dead: it's Too Late!"

see "Anne Frank Remembered", for this, by someone who lived it )

Autodesk

[Anonymous Coward]

Most Autodesk software seems to write to the MBR too (without disclosing it), but I have not experienced problems with Grub.

Wow, it's Rip Van Winckle!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it's Rip Van Winckle!

"Probably not until xorg and the linux kernel get decent 3d support for ati or nvidia. (decent meaning at least as fast the closed source drivers for a large subset of openGL and fully implements all the 3d functions of the closed source drivers.)"

The nVidia linux driver IS their closed source driver, FWIT.

And AMD have released a full 3D open source GPL compliant driver for their recent cards.

Please, go back and read some news sites from 5 years ago, they'll fill you in on what you missed while asleep.

Re:Wow, it's Rip Van Winckle!

[micheas]

Wow, it's Rip Van Winckle!

"Probably not until xorg and the linux kernel get decent 3d support for ati or nvidia. (decent meaning at least as fast the closed source drivers for a large subset of openGL and fully implements all the 3d functions of the closed source drivers.)"

The nVidia linux driver IS their closed source driver, FWIT.

And AMD have released a full 3D open source GPL compliant driver for their recent cards.

Please, go back and read some news sites from 5 years ago, they'll fill you in on what you missed while asleep.

Nouveau is the open source nvidia driver, The opensource AMD driver is much slower than the closed source fglrx ati drivers, This is slowly changing and nouveau is becoming closer to feature complete.

Progress is either happening very quickly or very slowly in this regard, depending on your perspective, from the end users point of view the stability is getting worse, as lots of slow stable code is discarded for new code that eventually will be much faster, but for the moment is the worst of all worlds. From the developer point of view, the specs are open the code is starting to work, and the features are being complete at a pretty amazing rate.

I would guess that the big event in Linux graphics is going to be when a release includes nouveau as the default and drops the NV and support for the nvidia.

What you don't seem to get is that unless there is a well documented opensource graphics subsystem, it won't be virtualized with near native speed.

This happened to me.

[Handlarn]

I dual booted Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04 (or 9.10, I don't remember), because I work with Adobe products often so I need Windows but I also like to dabble in Linux from time to time and running either OS in a virtual machine doesn't cut it.

Ubuntu/Windows fucked up my GRUB and/or ext3 partition and I couldn't really find a way to fix it either. I'm not a beginner Linux-user but I am no sysadmin either. I could never get into my Ubuntu system again.
Ubuntu/Windows also messed with the head of scandisk/chkdsk in Windows 7 that it "repaired" my files regularly at reboot which eventually lead to a huge loss of data. (Most of which I got back, fortunately.)

Since then I don't dare to run Linux/Windows dual boot anymore. It's a shame, because I like them both.

Re:This happened to me.

[mcgrew]

I use LILO, and occasionally Windows will FUBAR that too, but I just run Mandriva's OS updater, which restores LILO and leaves the rest of the file system alone. Takes all of five minutes.

Happened repeatedly to my XP/Ubuntu laptop

[dohzer]

I had a problem where whenever I booted into Windows there was around a 50% chance it would corrupt my GRUB 2 bootloader.
I couldn't be bothered doing a format, so I ended up leaving my Ubuntu install CD in the drive so that whenever it happened I could boot Linux from the CD, repair GRUB 2 and reboot.
But it was frustrating as hell.
I've since formatted and luckily (don't jinx it!) whatever was corrupting it hasn't been reinstalled.

GRUB HAS A STUPID DESIGN

[Anonymous Coward]

GRUB was badly designed.

GRUB should never have used the sectors between MBR and first partition.

The first 1024 bytes of an EXT2 partition are unused. GRUB should install itself on an EXT2 partition and use the first 1024 bytes to load.

Instead heres how it should operate:

MBR:
Load first 1024 bytes of EXT2 partition.

EXT2 Boot Record:
Within 1024 bytes it should be possible to find STAGE2 file in root directory and load it.

GRUB is poorly designed.... I hope they fix it!

brilliant!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it still work with modern OSs? What happens to the partition table? Someone mentioned that you can use Bios to enable virus protection on the MBR, essentially preventing anything to be written to this sector. If what you have can be done with that, then I don't see how Bios or UEFI would be able to modify this in windows or during an installation without the user's consent. A virus protection option in Bios should always stop any Windows or other OS when an installation plans to overwrite it (by overriding the user access control and whatever hack the software tries).

Separate drives

[Chmcginn]

After several hair-pulling incidents where Windows ate my bootloader, I changed my dual-boot configuration to two separate bootable drives. So rather than using GRUB to decide which OS I'm booting into, the BIOS stops on boot-up to ask whether I want to boot off the Western Digital or the Seagate drive.

Re:Separate drives

[Lord Byron II]

I did something similar. Windows is on my first hard drive (/dev/sda or C:, depending on your point of view) and Linux is on /dev/sdb or D:. I have the BIOS boot /dev/sdb, which is where Grub is. Then, when I boot to Windows, it never has any reason to mangle /dev/sdb, because it sees it as an unformatted D: drive.

So, these sorts of apps can do whatever they want to the first few sectors of /dev/sda, as long as Windows continues to boot, and Linux and GRUB are left untouched.

Re:Separate drives

[Alsee]

when I boot to Windows, it never has any reason to mangle /dev/sdb, because it sees it as an unformatted D: drive.

[DRM author]
Oh look! An unformatted D: drive! The perfect unused place to overwrite with DRM data!
[/DRM author]

-

Re:Separate drives

[RockDoctor]

Then, when I boot to Windows, it never has any reason to mangle /dev/sdb, because it sees it as an unformatted D: drive.

Cynical response : application sees unformatted D: drive and is coded to respond "there must be evil terrorist plans and kiddy porn in the truecrypt partition. I'd better call the FBI / FSS / MI6 / Whoever and send them fingerprint information."
Slightly less cynical response : application sees unformatted D: drive and has been coded by ignorant programmer to "helpfully" format it. Same ignorant programmer also knows that his application always needs administrative privileges, particularly for reading it's configuration from the registry (who would bother to have configuration in a text file?).

3ds max does the same

[Sanakan]

The same applies to 3ds max, if you don't have a license server.

Welcome to 2004. We had the same problem with GRUB

[QX-Mat]

Cedilla was baaaad!

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The first 64 sectors of your harddisk are becoming a minefield. The partition table uses sector 0. The boot block uses sector 1. The local user version of the Flex Licence Manager uses sector 37. There are no standards for any other software using any other sectors.

Is this relevant?

[smchris]

I think so, because the wife's Flash 9 (css 2? -- whatever. Like I care) quit working on a KVM-qemu virtualized XP cylinder after an update, so she got it reactivated on her XP boot. That was an XP/Debian boot with XP on partition 1 handling the boot using the boot block trick chaining to Debian's grub 1 on partition 2. Decided to overwrite Debian with Ubuntu Lucid on partition 2 and that's a grub 2 boot of course. Did an fdisk and made partition 2 bootable before I called up the live disk to install Ubuntu. Now we have an Ubuntu/XP boot and her Flash 9 still seems happy so that might be the route to coexistence? Just boot partition 2 and let the damnable Windows programs do their worst on partition 1?

FreeBSD is better?

[ratboy666]

Let me quote from the FreeBSD manual: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/boot-blocks.html

"Conceptually the first and second stages are part of the same program, on the same area of the disk. Because of space constraints they have been split into two, but you would always install them together. They are copied from the combined file /boot/boot by the installer or bsdlabel (see below).

They are located outside file systems, in the first track of the boot slice, starting with the first sector. This is where boot0, or any other boot manager, expects to find a program to run which will continue the boot process. The number of sectors used is easily determined from the size of /boot/boot."

The FreeBSD booting mechanism on the x86 does the SAME thing as GRUB. It can also use LILO for booting.

Your comment is not warranted. A Windows dual-boot with such a "bad program" could possibly damage a FreeBSD boot loader as well.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha. Considering that my Windows 7 "upgrade from Vista" DVD (which actually installs the whole OS) won't even OFFER TO FORMAT AS NTFS (it only complains that the drive is not formatted NTFS and expects me to do the formatting separately first), I don't expect Microsoft to add that feature anytime soon.

Swappable drives

[jdege]

I gave up on multi-boot installations a number of years, ago. I've had my last couple of PCs configured with swappable drive bays. When I want to boot a different OS, I just stick in a different drive.

I know

[squirrl]

Because they were the only one's that wanted to bother farting around with finding 700 actual linux boxes to compromise. Running with Linux for 14 years.

possible solution

[aminorex]

Sounds like the simple solution is to make a partition that holds the disk region in question.

Fight Back

[Galik]

Modify the code of Grub 2 to make Windows unbootable...

Because the original BIOS's designers were cheap..

[Anonymous Coward]

In the OpenFirmware BIOS (found on IBM System p hardware), there are read-only file-system drivers for FAT/ISO9660(CDROM)/ISO13356(DVD) and I'm sure most UEFI BIOS's have those drivers too. When you have that, you don't need to worry about code hidden in the MBR or preserving hardcoded offsets in a partition where certain files have to sit. The BIOS code just goes to the architected //bootinfo.txt file (CHRP format) and lists the boot options described therein, and it all just works with less complexity.

Alas, we're still playing with 1980's software architecture.

I am running Kubuntu right now

[alizard]

If there's a difference in terms of stability between a Kubuntu desktop, a Debian desktop (ex-user), and a Fedora Core desktop (ex-user), I certainly haven't noticed one, and given that my desktop and netbook both run Kubuntu as does my roommate's 900 MHz netbook, if there were a stability problem, I'd be trying to fix it. I shifted to Kubuntu over driver availability and other convenience issues.

compute shaders?

[alizard]

In google-chrome linux, (v6 beta), minor loss in stability, but overall speed with lots of open tabs improves to the point that it's worth it.

Change the activation command in icon settings to
/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome -enable-accelerated-compositing %U

to try it yourself. Usual disclaimer... if your machine catches fire or demons materialize and eat you after you try this, it's on you.

Use Windows boot loader to boot Linux or other OS

[Pelam]

If Windows and Windows programs insist on controlling the boot sector (and stuff that comes after it), you can still boot Linux.
At least starting with Vista, Windows has completely extensible boot loader of its own (the configuration data is called BCD).

The idea is that the Grub (or whatever) is installed on the same Linux *partition* where all the system files are installed (not on the MBR).
(At least Ubuntu installer has the option to install Grub on a partition instead of MBR out of the box.)

Windows boot loader is then used to load Grub from the beginning of that partition. No matter what
windows updates, programs etc. do this does not break.

Too bad that the default Linux installers don't support this option, since it
has been very hassle free for me at least. The initial setup could just as well be automatic.

Instructions for doing this manually here:

http://port25.technet.com/archive/2006/10/13/Using-Vista_2700_s-Boot-Manager-to-Boot-Linux-and-Dual-Booting-with-BitLocker-Protection-with-TPM-Support.aspx

Re:

[QuantumBeep]

You can't install most software without administrator perms. Not that that's a bad thing.

Don't boot from the Hard drive....

[steeleyeball]

coreboot formerly known as LINUX BIOS. Problem solved. If it boots from the BIOS chip anything done to the Hard drive doesn't matter. Bwa ha ha ha ha!

Sounds like Microsoft has erected another Barrier!

[cmdrwhitewolf]

Complete with strains of Microsoft's goings on over DR-DOS of old. Need some ref material on this angle? You could try - http://thismatter.com/articles/microsoft.htm