Re: Is the BIOS Boot Partition required when GRUB is not installed to the MBR?

[Brandon Simmons]

> I'm trying to figure out a rather esoteric problem: I recently
> installed Debian squeeze on a Dell netbook with OSX installed. In the
> Debian installation I specified that GRUB be installed to the Debian
> partition, but (I believe) before that step the installer created a
> bios_grub partition.
>
> FWIW I'm currently booting into OSX using the Chameleon Bootloader.
>
> Well I am trying to run a utility called 'gptsync' and it seems that
> it aborts when it sees the "Unknown" grub_bios partition. So the short
> story is I would like to know if it is safe to destroy this partition.
>
> I have read the documentation here:
>
>    http://grub.enbug.org/BIOS_Boot_Partition
>
> But am not sure if it applies to an installation of GRUB directly to a
> linux partition.

To answer my own question: no, that partition does not seem to be
necessary when chainloading GRUB from another bootloader. I deleted it
without problems.

And for future internet Archeologists: the problem I ran into with
Chameleon not recognizing my Debian partition was apparently related
to a a bug in parted in which the linux partition was labeled as EFI
in the GPT. I don't even really know what that means.

I fixed it by running the tool GPT Fdisk:

    http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/

...under OSX and used the 't' command to change the partition type
code of my Debian partition to code 0700. Then Chameleon recognizes it
and shoots us into GRUB.

There. Just saved someone five hours.


>
>
>
> Thanks for any insights,
> Brandon Simmons
> http://coder.bsimmons.name/
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:22:37 +0530
> From: "KESHAV P.R." <address@hidden>
> Subject: Re: GRUB2 and /dev/sdb9p1
> To: address@hidden
> Message-ID:
>        <address@hidden>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> You should probably try (hd0,msdos9,msdos1) or simply (hd0,9,1) . I
> would suggest the first one. Note - this kind of device naming in
> GRUB2 came after 1.98 release. You need to use a bzr version of GRUB2.
>
> Try :-
>
> set root=(hd0,msdos9,msdos1)
> chainloader (hd0,msdos9,msdos1)+1
>
> Regards.
>
>
>>
>> I need to update my BIOS (new graphic card but you don't care) but the
>> tool the manufacturer provides is a Windows (only) executable.
>> VirtualBox can't help me this time as the BIOS is also "virtual".
>>
>> I reduced my swap partition to let me 2GB for WinXP.
>> Then I created a fake VirtualBox HDD linked with the real partition :
>>
>> "sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename 
>> /VM/VDI/root/XP_real.vdi -rawdisk /dev/sdb9 -register"
>> (the root privileges are necessary to write on the real partition)
>>
>>
>> And finally I installed XP from VirtualBox but now I would like to boot
>> XP from GRUB2 and... I don't get by.
>> Indeed, /dev/sdb9 was seen as a whole disk by W$ and that's why, I have
>> now a partition table inside my /dev/sdb9 partition.
>>
>> sudo fdisk /dev/sdb9
>> Command (m for help): p
>>
>> Disk /dev/sdb9: 2097 MB, 2097414144 bytes
>> 64 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1016 cylinders
>> Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 = 2064384 bytes
>> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>> Disk identifier: 0xce69ce69
>>
>>      Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
>> /dev/sdb9p1   *           1        1015     2046208+   7  HPFS/NTFS
>>
>>
>>
>> I tried several combinations with drivemap (hd0) (hd0,9), set
>> root=(hd0,9) and chainload (hd0,9)+1 ... but XP refuses to boot.
>>
>> Any idea how I could boot my XP from GRUB2 ?
>> Thanks in advance
>>
>
>
>
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