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I'm new to Linux and was just wondering what blocklists are and why they are considered unreliable.

Example of my problem:

will@Will-PC:~$ sudo burg-install /dev/sda1
/usr/sbin/burg-setup: warn: Attempting to install GRUB to a partition instead of the MBR.  This is a BAD idea..
/usr/sbin/burg-setup: warn: Embedding is not possible.  GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists.  However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
/usr/sbin/burg-setup: error: if you really want blocklists, use --force

The problem is: /dev/sda1 is my MBR.

Any description of blocklists or advice to my problem will be appreciated!

Zanna
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Will
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1 Answers1

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The reason why this is unreliable is because burg is still a work in progress, and that's why this is not installed by default on Ubuntu.

And a blocklist is something specific to grub/grub2/burg ( at least in the terminology ).

This is used to read data that are not part of a file system, ie by reading directly on the disk. You can see some information on https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Block-list-syntax.html#Block-list-syntax

And no, the MBR is not on /dev/sda1, this is on the beginning of the disk ( ie on /dev/sda, the first block ), and sda1 is the first partition.

So you should really check if this is not /dev/sda that you should use. However, since the bootloader is critical, I would double check everything if I were you before touching.

Misc
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