Re: [gentoo-user] grub over the top of Win XP

[Willie Wong <wwong@Princeton.EDU>]

As posted on /. recently, 

On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 12:12:21PM -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> Beyond that I don't pretend to know anything.
> 
> The one thing that always confuses me is the difference between
> placing grub in the MBR and placing it in a partition. It is my
> understanding that the MBR is a separate part of the drive structure,
> and is not part of any partition. Is this true?
> 
> When we place an bootloader in the MBR that's what the system jumps to
> first? After that the bootloader in the MBR can transfer to either an
> operating system or to a second boot loader. I've done this where I
> had a copy of grub from Gentoo in the MBR, and then a copy of grub in
> a partition. Each copy had their own grub.conf file and managed it's
> own set of kernels, etc.
> 
> However, what Windows does is a bit beyond me. I suppose it places
> it's own bootloader in the MBR. We then overwrite it, but then we have
> a command to jump to that OS. (chainloader +1 I suppose?)
> 

a good source for some basics on how bootloaders work and why we need
them and what the heck MBR actually is:

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-bootload.html?ca=dgr-lnxw01LILOandGRUB

W
-- 
"If your're scattering a fly off an elephant, you don't worry about the mass of
the elephant. But since we're physicists, lets consider the alternate example. 
In this case, we scatter the elephant off the fly."
~DeathMech, S. Sondhi. P-town PHY 205
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