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

[Mike Fleetwood]

On Fri, 24 Oct 2025 at 05:42, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
>
> 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?
>
> 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.

I disagree.  If a user's machines doesn't boot they should re-install
their boot loader following relevant instructions, not run parted (a
partitioning tool) to install its MBR boot code.

Mike