Re: stage2 in unallocated space Re: an alternative approach...

[Brian Sammon]

Brian wrote:
> My idea was to have the stage1 jump directly to the stage 2, which would 
> be located in an unpartitioned section of the drive before the first 
> partition.
> The stage2 should look in a particular location on (hd0,0) , which would 
> be a FAT filesystem, for the menu.lst file.

David wrote:
> Brian Sammon wrote:
> > What other programs overwrite unallocated space?  Besides fdisk and other
> > bootloaders?
> > 
[snip]
> 
> Look for Subject : Re: [Bug-grub] Re: address@hidden: Re: Bug#185770:
> grub: incompatible with Windows 2000 NTFS when installed on MBR]

Thanks for the reference.
Grr.... So the list of programs to watch out for includes:
  Other bootloaders
  fdisk
  Windows
  Copy-protected programs

I'm planning not to use any of those programs (okay, fdisk occasionally) 
once/if I get grub working the way I want.
I think the risk of one of these programs causing problems is lower than 
the risk of a stupid DOS user (i.e. me) causing problems.  And I'll think 
about that placeholder partition idea...

Anyways, can anyone tell me if what I want to do is possible?  Or shed 
some light on the "install" command?