[arch-releng] grub install not listing partitions

[Eric Fernandez]

2011/12/16 Keshav P R <the.ridikulus.rat at gmail.com>:
> It is due to the fact that installing to a partition involves storing the
> sector/block lists of core.img in order to locate it. Since in many
> filesystems the file sector locations change, this way of booting (using
> sector/block lists of core.img) to locate the file may fail anytime.
> Actually the same issue is with syslinux in which ldlinux.sys sector
> locations should not change. Otherwise it will fail to boot. To ensure this
> happens, syslinux sets the immutable attribute on ldlinux.sys but this flag
> may not work with all the partitions. For more info read
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB2#Install_to_Partition_or_Partitionless_Disk.
>

Thank you for the information.

>
> Yes, there seems to be some issue chaninloading syslinux from grub2. We
> don't know where the issue is (grub2 or syslinux). But grub2 is so
> feature-rich, if you have grub2 in the MBR, you do not need syslinux at all
> (even if you are using multibooting across different discs with different
> partitioning schemes).
>
> Regards.
>
> Keshav

The problem is with various distributions that rewrite the grub menu
when their kernel is updated. This can become a maintenance issue.
Separating the bootloaders in a multiboot config is easier and cleaner
in my opinion. Furthermore, chainloading is inevitable with BSD or
Windows (as explained in the Arch wiki), so this should be supported
by GRUB devs.

Kind regards,
Eric