[lug] Determining if Lilo or Grub is current bootloader

[Lee Woodworth]

Zan Lynx wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-01-17 at 17:36 -0700, Daniel Webb wrote:
>> [OT] Is there any need for lilo any more?  Is there anything that lilo can do
>> that grub can't do better?
> 
> LILO works when it doesn't know anything about the filesystem.  GRUB
> requires a filesystem driver.

You can use block lists to specify files (with the attendant problems).
 From info grub:

A block list is used for specifying a file that doesn't appear in the
filesystem, like a chainloader. The syntax is
`[OFFSET]+LENGTH[,[OFFSET]+LENGTH]...'.  Here is an example:

      `0+100,200+1,300+300'

    This represents that GRUB should read blocks 0 through 99, block 200,
and blocks 300 through 599. If you omit an offset, then GRUB assumes
the offset is zero.

You use this block list facility to boot Win$ on an NTFS partition:

title Windows 2000 Pro
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader  +1


> LILO works on RAID-1 mirrors.  GRUB does not, as far as I know.
> 
> LILO continues to work even when your /boot filesystem is fsck'd up.
> I've seen GRUB fail to read the kernel and initrd off a sufficiently
> corrupted partition.
> 
> Of course, I personally prefer GRUB, but you did ask. :)
> 
> 
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