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

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: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).

"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"

[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.