[syslinux] chainboot from grub to syslinux in logical partition

[Jeff Sadowski]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 4:48 AM, Ferenc Wagner <wferi at niif.hu> wrote:
> Cynthia Flynn <1cynthia2flynn3 at telus.net> writes:
>
>> My thinking is that this would be possible if I could get syslinux
>> or some other utility to write a proper volume boot record to the
>> logical partition's boot sector without altering the thumb drive's
>> master boot record.
>
> This is exactly what the syslinux installer does under Linux.  Are you
> sure it's different under Windows?  (Warning: I never used syslinux
> under Windows.  I havn't been using Windows for several years.  I've
> never used syslinux to boot from a logical partition.)
>
>> I think that when syslinux installs are done that ldlinux.bss and
>> ldlinux.sys are patched according to drive/partition-specific
>> attributes and ldlinux.bss is then written to the boot sector,
>> right?
>
> Yes, as far as I know.
>

He has to have meant no here or yes to "ldlinux.bss and ldlinux.sys
are patched according to drive/partition-specific attributes" and no
to writing ldlinux.bss written to the boot sector because it doesn't
follow what he said as above and below and syslinux doesn't touch the
MBR unless you explicitly tell it to in the windows version as far as
I have always understood. In fact in the MBR, after you install
syslinux to a partition you have to set that partition as active. If
you had grub or lilo you had to either chain load syslinux or install
mbr.bin to the MBR that is what the flag does in windows if you use
it.

>> But, in Windows XP it is not normally possible for syslinux.exe to
>> even see anything but the first partition on a thumb drive.
>

This is a windows limitation you can not as far as I know mount them
as their own drive letters in windows.
If it has a drive letter you can use syslinux on it. I'll experiment
more with windows and the disk management in it to try and find a way
around this but it seems like a windows limitation. I'll try vista
when I get a chance also.

> Not even with administrator privileges?
>
>> Moreover, syslinux.exe would overwrite my MBR. And is it even
>> capable of writing a VBR to a logical partition anyway?
>
> From http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/SYSLINUX:
>
>  These are only in the Windows version:
>    -m  Mbr; install a bootable MBR sector to the beginning of the drive.
>
> So just don't use this option...
> --
> Regards,
> Feri.
>
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