Re: Linux mdadm superblock question.

[Rudy Zijlstra]

H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> On 02/15/2010 07:18 PM, david@xxxxxxx wrote:
> > On Mon, 15 Feb 2010, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> >
> > > On 02/15/2010 04:27 PM, Neil Brown wrote:
> > >
> > > There are three options:
> > >
> > > a) either don't boot from it (separate /boot);
> > > b) use a bootloader which installs in the MBR and
> > > hopefully-unpartitioned disk areas (e.g. Grub);
> > > c) use a nonstandard custom MBR.
> > >
> > > Neither (b) or (c), of course, allow for chainloading from another OS
> > > install and thus are bad for interoperability.
> >
> > I have had no problems with XFS partitions and lilo as the bootloader.
> > I've been doing this for a couple of years now without realizing that
> > there is supposed to be a problem.
>
> LILO also can be stuffed in the MBR (and then uses block-pointers from 
> there).  There is one more option that I didn't mention, which is to 
> put the bootloader of a separate partition, OS/2 style.  Again, breaks 
> the standard chainloading model.
There is another configuration that fails. Use partitioned md. I do not 
think it matters whether over whole device or with a partition table. 
Neither grub nor lilo will boot off from it. I've tested that exensively 
with a partition on the disks.  I am using PXE boot to boot 2 servers 
with that configuration. That adds a dependency on the pxe boot server, 
but considering the function of those servers they are moot if that pxe 
server is dead anyways....

Cheers,


Rudy

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