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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."
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.
... 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.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Protecting your laptop from open source commies. And maybe viruses.
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.
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.
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.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
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...
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.)
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.
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).
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
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.
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.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
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.
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.
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)
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
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?
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.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
And yes, LILO is still supported and under development. LILO 23
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Rather than dual boot just run windows out of a VM if you must run windows.
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?
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".
C|N>K
Yeah, because games sure do great in a VM.
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!
Yea, article is somewhat trollish, all three apps listed are server apps, and who the fuck would dual boot a server?
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.
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".
http://crummysocks.com
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.
If you want games then do it the other way around, Windows as the main OS, Linux in the VM.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers.
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.
Tech Public Policy stuff
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Given the pace of technology, I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside." -- Calvin
That sort of thing is SOP for HP and Adobe lately, and certain video game manufacturers.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
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.
Or how about I continue to dual-boot, and use my PC the way I want to?
> 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".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
The ______ Agenda
Obviously no software that is legally free is available on Windows as well, right? How much did you pay for Firefox again?
I tried loadlin once. It made Windows unbootable.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
> 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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"You and your grandmother likely have different definitions of "hard"."
As long as she's satisfied, I'll retain my definition.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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.'
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.
.
Say no to any DRM'd shit!
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 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.
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. ;-)
I once had a signature.
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.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
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.
Work bio at MMWD
What about Gimp as a Photoshop replacement?
Since when do designers make $100/hr? If that's the case, I'm working at the wrong place. :P
zosxavius photography
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.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
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.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
Virtualization is the last refuge of a horrendously mis-engineered operating system.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
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.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
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/.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
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?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
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.
In an era of really inexpensive hardware and KVM switches, I can't see a reason to ever dual boot.
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.
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.
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
So how does apache open port 80 then?
... or an HP ...
(Just kidding HP, my laptop is a still-going-strong, dual-booting HP L2000.)
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
Sounds like it solved a lot of problems then?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
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.)
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
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.
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". ;)
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Work bio at MMWD
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.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
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.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
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.
The same applies to 3ds max, if you don't have a license server.
Pro-tip: buy a Mac for the designers
Problem solved
how long until
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.
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
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.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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..
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Cedilla was baaaad!
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.
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?
Oh i agree, but look at any steam story and a lot of post here are backing up how awesome steam is.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
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.
The ______ Agenda
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.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If those machines are dedicated to people that require windows-only software why are they dual-booting?
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
Car analogies break down.
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.
Truecrypt 5.0 is fairly old. Does 7.0 disk encryption (for newly created ones with 7.0) still have this issue?
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.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
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.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.
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.
$100 an hour? Where can I apply?
Or switch to LILO
You insensitive clod. Some of us never switched from LILO in the first place...
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.
Sounds like the simple solution is to make a partition that holds the disk region in question.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
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.
Modify the code of Grub 2 to make Windows unbootable...
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.
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.
Tech Public Policy stuff
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.
/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome -enable-accelerated-compositing %U
Change the activation command in icon settings to
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.
Tech Public Policy stuff
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.
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
And 'sudo make install' is entirely unheard of....
yvan eht nioj
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).
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!
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.
You can't install most software without administrator perms. Not that that's a bad thing.
What makes you think that Adobe's DRM is any less draconian on the Mac?
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!
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
[Now, I'm off to lift my le... Um, visit... at another place.]
-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.
Mass Effect... *facepalm*
What's up with the new generation of gam- interactive movie enthusiast?
Mass Effect is not a game.
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