Boot, Boot, Master Record!
I've done some boot loader work in my time, but it's a classic example of a skill most people don't use often enough to get good at, and that's certainly true in my case. I have used System Commander for several years now, and always did well with it, and even understood it reasonably well. Then a few days ago I discovered (after much virtual hair tearing) that System Commander does not play well with Ubuntu-in fact, does not play at all. This was odd, as System Commander recognized a bootable instance of Red Hat for me five or six years ago, and I assumed Linux in general was no problem for it. In fact, I'm very annoyed at V-Comm right now because on its own Web pages it says it supports "Linux (All)" and yet on its support forums you'll find this note.
So System Commander is out, and plug-ugly GRUB is in. I've played around with LILO and Linux-hostile NTLDR in the past, but had not met GRUB until Ubuntu/Kubuntu installed it. It works well enough, but boot loaders are a tricky business, and I discovered something a little surprising while researching it: There is no book (even from O'Reilly!) on GRUB or boot loaders generally. Wrox has an entire book on DotNetNuke Skinning (whateverthehell that is) but nothing on boot loaders. This is in part a slicing problem: Most general books on Linux include some verbiage on boot loaders (typically LILO) somewhere. I want to slice it the other way: I want a book on the PC boot process, including a lucid description of the master boot record and how the whole thing works, with detail chapters on NTLDR, LILO, GRUB and perhaps System Commander. (There are some minority players that might warrant mention as well.) Alas, that book does not exist, and I don't know enough myself to write it. I could see a book called Master Boot-with cover art depicting an old boot with useless little arms, a pack of onion rings, and a naked chicken wing with a dopey grin.
Maybe it's time to entertain some new ideas about the PC booting process. Just this morning I spotted this on Wired, though details are sparse and I'm not quite sure how it's supposed to work. And I keep thinking that virtualizers like Xen should themselves replace and become the bootloader, "booting" a clean snapshot of an OS in a VM while keeping a vigiliant hypervisor in an inaccessible memory space and a separate core. Xen does seem to be moving in that direction, but boy, with System Commander down in flames and the intricacies of GRUB looming in my face it can't happen fast enough for me.