Quote:
Originally Posted by duryodhan
Does the bootable flag matter at all for linux ? I know windows doesn't boot up without bootable flag, but my linux seems to work fine without such flag...
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I have always wondered about that also. On my desktop I have: winXP, ubuntu and zenwalk. On my laptop I have: ubuntu, slackware, and debian. Grub in installed to the MBR of each. On each system I only set the OS on the first primary partition to be bootable (winXP on the desktop, ubuntu on the laptop) and I can boot them all.
Here is "fdisk -l" from my desktop:
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Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2550 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 2551 4374 14651280 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 4375 4617 1951897+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/sda4 4618 19457 119202300 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 4618 6441 14651248+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 6442 19457 104550988+ 83 Linux
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Hmmm, running "fdisk -l" from slackware on the laptop shows that nothing seems to have boot flag set. Ubuntu is sda1, slakware is sda5, and debian is sda6:
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Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1216 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 1217 1338 979965 82 Linux swap
/dev/sda3 1339 9729 67400707+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 1339 2554 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 2555 3770 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 3771 9729 47865636 83 Linux
bash-3.1#
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They all can boot though.