[parted-devel] [PATCH 0/2] Stop replacing boot code in MBR when updating msdos table

[John Gilmore]

Brian C. Lane <bcl at redhat.com> wrote:
> In theory I'm fine with this, and I agree that the bootloader should
> handle this. Are we sure that nothing depends on this being written?

I'm a guy who wrote boot roms in the 1980s.

The few bytes of code at the start of a particular drive are a very tiny
nail that the whole system's startup depends on.  "For want of a
nail...your system won't boot."

If parted changes to not do this by default, which I agree is likely a
reasonable evolution, the capability to write a bootloader should
probably *remain* in parted, as a separate command for emergencies.  If
the capability is still there, then somebody who was depending on this
behavior can ask a search engine what to do and it'll tell them the
simple recovery command (if they can boot their system somehow and get
into parted again, e.g. from an OS installation image).  If not, they'll
have to find and configure some other boot loader for their situation,
or "dd" a boot loader from some other drive without clobbering their
partition table -- a much more challenging task.

After a year or two, if nobody tells us they needed it, the new command
could be retired.

	John