Grub on MBR - not for everyone.

Does anyone know RPM repository where I can get GRUB install that has option to put it on PBR of the Linux root partition rather than in MBR? In fact it does not have to be in RPM butt at least tar or tgz format binary that I can run from sh ./install or sh ./configure and like.

I am having a hard time understanding SUSE 11 distribution forcibly install GRUB into MBR. Why not give us an option to put it on it’s root partition PBR as it did on earlier versions Otherwise Linux is useless in my case. My point is that it does not hurt to ask for help. In 2000, I emailed Caldera asking why their 2.4 distribution did not show any drives beyond sdd even though devfs directory already had sde sdf sdg files and way beyond. They did correct this at the next release 3.1.

In the following scenarii, GRUB in MBR is even harmful.

When Linux or Unix boot partition is installed on second or third disk.

When you have a commercial boot loader installed prior to Linux or Unix, then GBUB on MBR would not work together, whether the commercial boot loader has self defence feature turned on to recover original MBR from it’s archive or not (killing GRUB in one single boot). On other SCSI systems I used, GRUB in PBR has always worked well together with commercial boot loaders when OS had option to put GRUB on PBR rather than MBR like Redhat 9 or prior and most versions of Caldera did. Unfortunately those versions do not work with SATA II disks nor nVidia geForce display card. Browser support choice on 2.4 .x kernel is getting scarce as well.

When user need to change BIOS control of disk channel hierarchy with mainstream i82801GB embedded PCI-E SATA II/ATA133 block device controller, sice GRUB does not write grub.conf in accordance with Unix PCI-E physical root bridge hierarchy e.g., c0t0d0p0 (controller ID – target ID – disk ID – partition ID) system no longer able to boot linux. If it did, GRUB caused no problem since it won’t be fooled by apparent hierarchy modified by presence of additional disk attached to ATA side bus after filling up two SATA II space. The GRUB sees if ATA is absent then SATA 0 become hd0. Subsequent addition of one disk on ATA channel side makes original SATA 0 appear as hd1 to GRUB. Then all Unix or Linux become unbootable without help of more sophisticated commercial boot loader. True physical hierarchy always is given to how closely the interface resembles to ansi st506, therefore ATA takes precedence over SATA and SCSI. I can not fight over ansi registered hierarchy based on historic dates of invention or patent registry.

Please kindly help by guiding how to put GRUB on PBR.
That would be a great help. I can edit fstab, mtab, grub.conf menu.lst from CD boot and OS loaded to a ram disk then mounting any partition without any problem. I also know how to put back 512 byte MBR/PBR/EPBR pages from saved images thereof from floppy using dd or debug or disksave because I keep CHS table and sector number records on a spreadsheet per disk basis. Plus I have changed all files exist in Linux to 777 for easy external edit when mounted from floppy or CD boot. I even noticed original unix su command no longer seem to work and sudo –v seems to be necessary in lieu of su- or su. on modern Linux. So many changes I can not keep up with them.

Pinecloud

System

Attempted to install SUSE but GRUB
location makes causing problem.

Dell Dimension Intel Dual Core 3 GHz
945 chip set – socket 775
2GB Memory
two 300GB SATA II disks
one 74GB ATA 133 disk
one DVD RW ATA133
nVidea 6600GT

The system already has
NT, XP, Solaris10 all already
working with System Commander 8.21

The option is right there under the Boot Loader Installation tab. Besides Boot from “Master Boot Record” there is “Boot from Boot Partition” (if /boot is separate), “Boot from Root Partition”, and “Boot from Extended Partition” (if booting from a logical). With all three of those options, grub is installed in a PBR. (I use this frequently; I have ~dozen instances all chainloading this way.)

There would never be a separate rpm package - grub is grub, always installed from its shell; YaST is simply constructing and feeding it a script (the command can be seen under the Other button, click on Edit Configuration Files; it is /etc/grub.conf). If YaST doesn’t do what is desired, install openSUSE as usual except at the Boot Loader step manually disable installing grub; then reboot into the Rescue System and install it directly from the grub shell; also very easy.

Hello Wise Penguin Mingus725,

Thank you for the advise. Over the weekend, I was able to find quite few options to put GRUB exactly where I wanted.

Only one thing I could never understand was that there was no sound support for the default user whilst I had a complete sound support once I log out from KDE and log on as root. I spent whole day to find a way to make root as default KDM prompt but it was not easy as XDM and I still could not find it. I have set permission 777 on all the sound device as well as related lib and bin files.

I set AppArmour off but I still could not get sound support and it kept saying that permission denied to open sound card. It is becoming to be a nightmare. I am from “startx” and “openwin” generation with mwm and CDE. I have not worked with Linux for a long time. Originally Unix did not care about limiting sound to particular users since sound daemon loaded before syslogger. Open sound system was much easier to deal with.

I can be just happy if I could set KDM to prompt for username instead of automatically logon as just a member of user group or to find a way to provide sound to users. Yast user profile editor did not show any users whilst /etc/profile did exist. But root does not use such thing as profile therefore there was nothing I can even paste on profile.

I have no need to use any of such privilege limiting feature. I would appreciate any idea or guidance.

Pinecloud

Please do NOT double post. I note you have already asked this question here: No sound for users but only for root - openSUSE Forums
That is an ok place to put the question, but putting it in this grub thread is not logical. Asking for sound help on a thread with a Title “Grub on MBR - not for everyone” makes no sense.

I ask anyone who believes they can help you with your sound, NOT to reply on this current thread (for Grub help) but rather reply on the other thread you started here: No sound for users but only for root - openSUSE Forums