[haiku] Re: Haiku Installer: "Write Boot Sector to Haiku" button

  • From: "Alexandre Deckner" <alex@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:14:41

Stephan Aßmus <superstippi@xxxxxx> wrote:
> Chris Tognela schrieb:
> > In the process of installing the alpha - I like single click install 
> > ;) 
> > - I note a 'Write Boot Sector to Haiku' button. Though I have a 
> > rough 
> > idea, I can't find an explanation for what this does on the 
> > website; can 
> > I get a pointer please?
> 
> It makes the target partition itself bootable as far has Haiku is 
> concerned. A stage 1.5 (IIRC) boot loader is written into the first 
> sector of the partition with the correct partition offset. This loader 
> knows how to bootstrap the Haiku kernel and hand control over to it. 
> This is what is necessary for chainloading the Haiku partition from a 
> boot menu manager like GRUB, or if the partition were the active 
> patition on the boot harddrive, so that the BIOS directly boot into 
> Haiku. The normal installation procedure will do this step at the 
> end, 
> but there are certain situations in which you just want to make a 
> partition bootable without performing the time consuming main 
> installtion. For example you could copy all your files to another 
> partition and all that's needed is to make it bootable, or something 
> along those lines. You can do this from the command line, but the 
> button 
> is a more obvious way. It needs a tooltip perhaps. :-) But tooltip 
> support was added to Haiku after I added the button.
> 
> In the near future, I woud also like to add a button to install the 
> "bootman" boot manager into the MBR as another shortcut in the 
> Installer 
> GUI.

From a newcomer perspective, i agree that the text of the button can be 
confusing, especially as one can easily mix "bootloader" and "boot 
manager/menu". It looks like you have to click it but you're not sure 
because you don't know exactly what it does or if it could render your 
other OS'es unbootable.
I'd just rename it to "Make partition bootable" or even put that only 
in DriveSetup as it's not clear here what part of the disk it touches. 
Something nice would be for DriveSetup to show the bootable status of a 
partition.
As for the future bootman button, it would be nice if labeled like 
"Install (Multi) Boot Menu", "manager" might be a bit vague.

Regards,
Alex





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