2011/12/16 Keshav P R <the.ridikulus.rat@gmail.com>:
I also want to point out the grub2 upstream does not recommend (but supports) installing grub2 to a partition.
But is that on a technical basis (like this fails 50% of the time) or just a warning: ok, the feature is there, but its support is not a priority. I never had any issue with grub on a partition, and if I chose to use it, I accept this is my responsibility.
I don't whether the same applies to grub-legacy. Syslinux by itself is simply installed to a partition with a small code in the MBR which chainloads the syslinux partition. Syslinux does not access files outside the partition in which it was instakked (exceot maybe when chainloading using chain.c32), so ideally grub-legacy in a partition can be replaced by syslinux (minus the MBR code). Users who want a bootloader that can access (directly) files from multiple partitions like grub-legacy does should go for grub2 as syslinux does not support that.
Regards.
Keshav
The problem is that you cannot chainload syslinux from grub2, as far as I could read on forum discussions this year. So if I have grub2 in the MBR (and for some reason cannot change it), then syslinux is not useable. Eric