On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 5:02 PM, Gordon Messmer <gordon.messmer@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 06/30/2015 03:41 PM, jd1008 wrote: >> >> So, it begs the question: > > > (that's not what "begs the question" means) Yes. It's an accusation. > >> Can I create a disk with msdos partitioning scheme, >> none of the partitions marked as bootable, and have bios >> quickly skip over it to the next device in the boot sequence? > > > So far it looks like the answer is "no" or "it depends on your BIOS." > > Both SeaBIOS and your Dell BIOS, based on what we've seen, will attempt to > use the boot sector of a disk with a valid MBR, even when the boot sector is > all zeros. That's consistent with all of the documentation I can find. > It's possible that other BIOS might skip an all-zero boot sector, but we > don't have any documentation of which systems behave that way. That seems to be true. > However, also based on testing, it seems that if you used GPT for your > partitions, then BIOS would skip over the drive during the boot process. No because every GPT creator also creates a PMBR which includes the MBR boot signature that you're telling us causes (some) BIOS's to use the entire MBR and then hang if it has nowhere to go. > So, maybe that's a solution? The only reasons I can think of to use MBR are > a) you have an operating system that can't read GPT and b) you need to boot > from the drive under BIOS. I don't think either of those apply to you. If you have such a BIOS, the work around is to not partition it either MBR or GPT. If it needs partitioning, use LVM on the whole block device. It has a signature the BIOS won't know about. -- Chris Murphy -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
