[Bug 995144] Re: Grub2 Corrupts Hard Drive and Bad Design Causing failed boot.

[David F.]

No, it doesn't require anything in the MBR.   The file system specific
kernel loader code goes in the boot sector of the partition.  All PC
based partitions are required to have a boot sector if bootable.  If
someone designs a file system without one and they want it to boot, they
didn't know what they were doing.

File system specific loaders can use file names and don't require bad
designs like using sector maps.  The file system can set aside enough
sectors it thinks would be required to for a kernel loader to access
files.   It's been done that way by just about everybody, including PC
*nix versions, OS/2, Windows, DOS, BeOS, MacOS on the PC, etc.. except
Linux.     Linux was / is unique in it's lack of PC standards and lack
of kernel loader being included standard.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/995144

Title:
  Grub2 Corrupts Hard Drive and Bad Design Causing failed boot.

Status in “grub2” package in Ubuntu:
  Won't Fix

Bug description:
  It's bad enough that the designers of various linux distros decided
  the default place for GRUB was the MBR instead of adhering to standard
  PC architecture practices (which all other OSes, including *nix
  version, followed), of putting the kernel loaders in the partition and
  making it active so standard code in the MBR would transfer control to
  it.  For cases where a volume was to boot it could have made the
  Extended partition active, put the start code in the EBR of the
  extended and have that boot the volume.    The Linux community would
  have a fit if MS decided it was going to write its own kernel loaders
  and stick them in the MBR and take over the disk.

  Anyway, now apparently whoever has taken over GRUB2 (latest version)
  has made some big mistakes and must not understand the standard pc
  architecture either.  Someone has made it write outside the first
  track of the hard drive if it doesn't think there is a partition
  there.

  1 - Writing outside the first track of the hard drive can corrupt
  partitions not in the MBR at the time which is common with various
  partitioning schemes and cause data loss for users.

  2 - Adding a partition to the start of the disk (cylinder aligned)
  afterwards would overwrite the part of GRUB written out beyond the
  first track making the entire system unbootable.

  3 - changing partition layouts can again overwrite GRUB data which
  should be in the partition by default.

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