Re: Sticky Boot Feature

[Dave Cinege]

Ian Duggan wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I was wondering if GRUB had something like a "sticky boot" feature. This
> would be a configuration item which would cause GRUB to try to boot the
> last menu entry that it successfully booted previously.
> 
> I would find this useful as when I'm using Linux and I reboot, 90% of
> the time I want to come back to Linux. Likewise when I'm using Windows
> or whatever. Especially Windows, given all the rebooting it requires.
> 
> If this feature doesn't exist, how hard do would it be to add? Is there
> space somewhere in the boot records to store the id of the last
> successfully booted system? I imagine there are all sorts of semantics
> that could be applied.

First that would give write support which thus far has been avoided AFAIK as
a matter of policy.

However it could be done, probably most easily, by writing a single byte to
the end of a raw area(stage 1, is there room?), corrisponding to the the
last entry selected. Of course this will get out of sync if the config file
is changed. It also assumes stage1 is actually in a known location, IE
sector zero, and it might not be.

I wouldn't mind this feature at all myself. I like it alot on OS/2 boot
manager. (Though you use dot have to fake out the BM install to get it to
work that way.) But OS/2 always consumed a primary parition, and could do
what ever it wanted in it.