Greg Freemyer said the following on 10/01/2012 08:37 AM:
Anton Aylward
wrote: Is there a tool which shows the non file system stuff on the disk, what boot records there, in an intelligent (aka non-hex-dump) format, so that we can see how the bios is going to boot?
I know that the partition editors flag bootable partitions, but what is "in there"?
Anton,
I think the answer to your question is no.
== details Sector 0 (or "master boot record (mbr)") is what drives a standard bios boot sequence. (I don't know about efi).
The partition table is in a portion of sector zero and various tools will dump that for you.
But much of sector zero is a small machine code boot loader. You can of course dissassemble it, but I doubt it would tell you much. Most boot solutions (lilo, grub, windows) replace the boot loader section of sector 0 with their own code.
No need to reply to me as well as the list :-) Yes, I understand that, but as you say, I'd have to disassemble it. What I'm talking about is _interpreting_ what's there. For example, when I install Linux I'm given an option of where I want the boot loader to go. What if I forget? Is there nothing that can take a walk through the chain from the MBR an tell me where everything is? Well obvious there is: its how things get booted! But how can I _inspect_ that? Suppose I have boot records on each partition. How can I tell the disk-level mbr to chain to one rather than another? Is there an inspector/editor for this? -- Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night." Charles M. Schulz, Charlie Brown in "Peanuts" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org