DragonFly MBR

[Magnus Eriksson]

On Thu, 9 Mar 2006, Ben Cadieux wrote:

>> I would suggest that FAT come out saying "DOS/Win9x" and NTFS say "WinNT
>> +".  My reason for that is based on the fact that the old version of
>
> That sounds reasonable enough; everyone agree?

   Well ... if we/you want to Do It Right, the boot selector really should 
ask the user what operating systems actually are installed.

   Trying to guess the OS from the partition ID has the potential to be 
confusing (or even misleading, in some admittedly rare cases).  And who 
decides what ID's should be listed anyway -- what is the typical scenario? 
Only DF and Windows?  DF, FreeBSD, Windows ... and Linux?

   What about OSX or Darwin?  Net- and OpenBSD?  (HURD?  BeOS?  OS2?)


I (also) run NetBSD.  NetBSD lets the user name the alternatives when 
bootcode is installed via fdisk:

http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?fdisk++NetBSD-current
http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?mbr++NetBSD-current

   ..and it even fits in 512 bytes.  A good idea worth stealing.  :-)

  (I haven't messed much with the boot selector after typing in "NetBSD" as 
the first alternative and "Windows 2000" as the second, some long time 
ago. So I can't really say much except that, well,  it seems to work, so 
far.)  :-)


MAgnus