Re: Does grub have to write to the boot device to boot a system?

[Paul Albrecht]

On Mon, 2008-03-17 at 12:14 -0700, walt wrote:
> Paul Albrecht wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > A question: Does grub have to write to the boot device to boot a system?
> > If not, is there an option to inhibit grub from writing to the boot
> > device?
> 
> Well, by definition a machine boots from the boot device, but the boot
> device doesn't need to be a hard disk if you want to avoid writing to
> it.  I have a USB stick and a floppy disk with grub installed that I
> keep around for booting emergencies.
> 
> If I knew your motivation for asking perhaps I could give you a better
> answer.
> 

More specifically, I'm booting linux with grub and have setup a separate
boot partition. After I boot the system, I md5sum'ed the boot device and
compared it with one saved from a prior boot. They're always different.

I think grub is writing the boot sector because I md5sum'ed all the
files in my boot partition and they remain unchanged over a boot.

Any idea why grub would be writing to the boot sector or is there some
other explanation?

> Something must load grub into memory and start it running.  That's what
> the first sector on the boot device does after the BIOS loads it.  What
> else did you have in mind that could do the same job?
> 
> 
> 
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-- 

Paul Albrecht