On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 2:08 AM, defonso <defonso@...> wrote:
>
> so i do all this crazy stuff and was wondering if it was possible to
> move an installation of xosl - without re-installing?
>
> what i want to know is how exactly does the bootcode in the mbr
> portion of xosl know were to go on the disk to find the partition it
> was installed in?
>
> does it just seek for the starting sector number or seek the partition
> flag or what?
>
> and can i make an easy adjustment (hexedit the bootcode in the mbr) to
> allow xosl to "find" or "know where" the partition is that it was
> installed in?
>
> i clone everything to image (via "dd" command for small things like
> mbr and xosl) - including the mbr (and/or just the bootcode first 440
> blocks) and the little partition that xosl resides in. each one a
> separate image. if i were migrating xosl to another disk with
> different geometry or just decided to alter the partitioning on my
> existing disk how might i simply hack the mbr bootcode to "point" to
> the new location (partition) of where i have decided my "restored
> image" of xosl is going to be?
>
> caveat: i do not want to reinstall xosl ever again and see no need to
> do so as long as i have an images of the mbr and the partition to
> which it was installed. can anyone help?
>

Well, this is a good question.

I do not know the exact answer. Maybe there is some documentation
about this somewhere in XOSL's installer source code or something.

What I have observed is that XOSL's MBR boot code does not boot the
partition marked as active (unlike a normal DOS boot code), it boots
directly the partition with XOSL on it even if it is not marked as
active. My guess is that the location of the partition on which XOSL
is is hard coded in the MBR by the installer. But I could be wrong,
maybe it uses some other scheme to find the partition.

I think some testing could easily be done by having two partitions,
installing XOSL on one, copying the MBR, installing on the other and
then comparing the MBRs.

Antoine