On Mon, 24 May 2010 05:29:56 -0400 (EDT), Ferenc Wagner wrote: > Stephen Powell <zlinux...@wowway.com> writes: >> >> Both grub-legacy and grub-pc use sectors on the hard disk outside of >> the master boot record [...] This breaks the design of the backup >> software that my employer uses. This backup software backs up the >> master boot record and all partitions; but since the extra sectors >> used by grub-legacy and grub-pc are outside the master boot record and >> are not part of any partition, they don't get backed up. >> Consequently, if we have a hard drive failure and restore from a >> backup, we have an unbootable machine. Lilo uses only the master boot >> record. A lilo-booted machine can be backed up and restored with our >> existing backup software just fine. > > You may want to try extlinux, it works much like LILO in this respect. > It lacks a convenient configuration system, but that of grub-legacy > would be easy to adapt, and I actually plan to work on this.
Thanks for the tip. That may be an option. I looked at the documentation online, and there does not appear to be an option equivalent to lilo's vga option, though, which I use a lot, especially since svgatextmode has already been pulled from squeeze. As of right now, if lilo was pulled from the distribution, I think I'd be inclined to build my own lilo package from source before switching to any other bootloader. To the best of my knowledge, it is the *only* bootloader which supports setting an initial text video mode *and* does not use any sectors outside the master boot record and outside of a partition. If I'm wrong about that, someone please correct me. As for a "convenient configuration system", editing a plain text file is plenty good enough for me. Your time is yours to use as you see fit; but if you have the requisite skills to become the equivalent of lilo upstream, I think there's a lot of people who would rather that you do that, myself included. I'd do it myself if I had the necessary skills and knowledge. But I don't. Thanks again for the tip. -- .''`. Stephen Powell : :' : `. `'` `- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1012155825.7010.1274712448896.javamail.r...@md01.wow.synacor.com
