[vox-tech] bootable partition question

[Peter Jay Salzman]

begin Stephen M. Helms <smh@silkie.org> 
> 
> Quoting Peter Jay Salzman <p@dirac.org>:
> 
> > 
> > my understanding is that a bootable partition is used when the MBR
> > doesn't contain a boot strap program -- BIOS loads in a bootstrapper
> > from the beginning of a bootable partition.
> > 
> > if this is right, what use does a bootable partition serve if lilo
> > resides in the MBR (as with the majority of linux systems)?
> > 
> > if that isn't correct, what does the bootable flag mean on a
> > partition?
> 
> This is a good question Pete!  I know that you can set other partitions as the
> boot partition.  I believe what happens is that there is a pointer in the MBR to
> the bootable partion so that you can have more than one bootable partion on a
> disk and change which one is the current bootable one.
> 
> Stephen

hi stephen,
 
i'm pretty sure that's correct, but what i'd like to know is, when
lilo is on the MBR, does the bootable flag become meaningless?

cfdisk seems to allow you to create multiple bootable partitions (of
course, i didn't try writing that to disk.  maybe cfdisk would pop up an
error if i did.)

pete

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