[ltp] GRUB loader, IBM recovery program conflict

[Greg Matheson]

On Tue, 01 Jul 2003, Tino Keitel wrote:

> The recovery program is vendor specific, so it's behaviour is vendor
> specific, too. Some recovery CDs are so stupid that they wipe out all
> partitions an restore Windows but keep the LILO MBR. This way you get a
> machine that can not even boot.

After installing RedHat, I noticed that the GRUB boot screen was coming up, 
but not the 'Press F11 to start Recovery Program' notice.

I tried using the Recovery Program boot disk I had made to get the notice
back and this succeeded. Unfortunately, I could not then boot Linux, 
except through a boot floppy.

I tried upgrading RedHat. The installation program said I didn't
have a boot loader, but at the end of the upgrading process, a screen
came up saying, 'No kernel packages have been upgraded, your boot
loader will not be reconfigured'.

And it hung as it started to reboot.

I then reinstalled RedHat, wiping the Linux partition, but on rebooting
it hung the same way. This was with a network install.
I was a bit worried.

I think, then, I held down the Start button to stop the hibernation (???)
(the Fn+F12 program) from kicking in and took out the battery
out to get it to start again.

And on restarting I had the GRUB loader screen back.

So I'm happy. 

I wonder if, instead of the MBR, I had chosen to have the GRUB loader 
use the /boot partition to start, even though the /boot partition is 
not in the first 1024 blocks, I would not have had this problem. 

I chose the MBR because the first Windows partition
takes up more than 1024 blocks, and the RedHat docs
say the BIOS may not be able to access /boot partitions
that are not in the first 1024 blocks.

Can the IBM BIOS access /boot partitions not in the first 1024 blocks?

--
Greg Matheson
Taiwan