Gecko/20110303 Thunderbird/3.1.9
UTC)
mp.os.os2.misc:3197
From: Jonathan de Boyne Pollard
> I would sure love some comments and ideas on this subject, especially
> on their setup!
>
> http://www.os2notes.com/os2tripleboot.html
>
Two things:
First, that 100MiB partition that you were so keen to avoid is actually
a good thing. It's Windows 7 separating the boot and system volumes.
An extension of the same idea, separating the system volume from the
user volume, is why Linux wants those three partitions that you enquire
about. (The third is of course the swap partition.)
http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/boot-a
d-system-volumes.html
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd799232%28WS.10%29.aspx
Second, separating the boot and system volumes with Windows 7 allows you
to make the Windows 7 system volume (which Microsoft likes to mis-name
the "boot" volume, remember) a secondary partition, rather than a
primary partition as you've been forced to have it.
In essence, your boot manager, whatever one you choose to employ, should
end up presenting you with a menu of two primary partitions and one
secondary partition:
* the Windows 7 boot partition (the "system" partition in Microsoft
Speak), which will in its turn display the Microsoft boot manager for
loading one's choice of Windows kernel and sets of device drivers from
the Windows 7 system (secondary) partition, or for running the various
Microsoft recovery utilities
* the Linux boot partition, which will start up LILO, GRUB, or
whatever to load one's choice of Linux kernel and bootstrap to the Linux
system (secondary) partition
* the eComStation boot+system partition, which will start up
eComStation from the combined boot+system (secondary) partition
In other words, your boot manager allows you to choose which boot volume
to boot, and the boot volume's boot loaders/managers then select which
exact configuration of the operating system to load with the respective
system partitions. They then can all access the user volumes (those
that they commonly understand, at any rate).
In an ideal world, you'd be EFI of course, and life would be a lot more
straightforward. The functionality of your three boot volumes (apart
from the extra recovery and maintenance stuff in the Windows 7 boot
volume, and, alas, Microsoft's Boot Manager) would be subsumed by the
*single* EFI System Partition where each operating system gets a
subdirectory of its own for its boot files, you wouldn't need a third
party boot manager in place of the pre-supplied boot manager that comes
with EFI firmware, you wouldn't be worrying about the need to
distinguish primary and secondary partitions because the EFI
partitioning scheme doesn't impose such a distinction in the first
place, you wouldn't be knocking at the door of the 2TiB limit of the MBR
partitioning scheme since the EFI partitioning scheme's analogous limit
is in the exabinarybytes, and you wouldn't be on the point of worrying
about the 2TiB limit on anything bootstrapped the PC/AT firmware way
from a Volume Boot Record because your operating systems wouldn't be
using VBRs to bootstrap themselves any more.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/efi-boot-process.html
http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/bios-p
rameter-block.html#V3.4
You cannot even approach this ideal, though. Unlike the people who
triple-boot MacOS 10, Linux, and Windows 7, one of *your* chosen
operating systems doesn't even understand the EFI partitioning scheme,
let alone is capable of bootstrapping on EFI firmware. So the ideal
world is a *long* way away for you, even though your disc sizes
themselves are picking up stones, tossing them from hand to hand, and
giving meaningful looks at those 2TiB limits. (-:
--- Internet Rex 2.31
* Origin: virginmedia.com (1:261/20.999)
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