Re: Determining if GRUB is the bootloader in use on a system

[Jeremy Katz]

On Wednesday, August 08 2001, OKUJI Yoshinori said:
> IMO, you shouldn't use a BPB as an identifier, because the user can
> modify it arbitrarily. Instead, what do you think about just searching
> the string "GRUB" from a boot record? GRUB will have the string even
> for the future, and I don't think LILO will have the string itself
> (except when the user might insert the string into a BPB :).

LILO may not have the string itself, but depending on where in the code
block it ends up, it's not outside of the realm of possibility that it
won't get overrwritten by LILO.  

And with the BPB, if it gets modified, the user has at least done it
knowingly.  The fact that this is already the way that LILO checks to
see if it is installed internally adds, to me at least, some sort of
consistency and sanity in a world where we can really guarantee very
little.

Jeremy