will Ubuntu screw with my recovery partition?

[gusl]

I am somewhat worried that the Ubuntu installer will either overwrite my WinXP Recovery partition (provided by HP), or put its own bootloader before one gets a chance to hit F11, preventing access to the Recovery Partition. My goal is to triple-boot: frequently boot into (1) Ubuntu and (2) WinXP, and very infrequently into (3) Recovery Partition.

Some claim that F11 is a BIOS feature, and thus safe. Others say that *not* deleting the Recovery Partition can cause boot problems.

Running cfdisk from the Live CD, I see that I have two partitions:
* sda1: NTFS, ~72.5GB
* sda2: W95 FAT32 (LBA), ~7.5GB

I think sda2 is the recovery partition; I find it a bit surprising that it's FAT.

UPDATE: This is exactly what I'm asking for, except that I have an HP, not an Acer. 'meierfra' suggests adding Ubuntu to the Windows bootloader.
Alternatively, 'pumalite' suggests installing grub to the partition, rather than to the MBR, and booting with SuperGrub. (This sounds annoying; imagine going through 2 boot screens every time you restart your machine) But none of this should be necessary if the "F11 Restore" is a BIOS feature, as some people claimed.

Comments

[dachte.livejournal.com]

If you're worried, make a copy of the MBR using "dd". If you're *really* worried, make a copy of the recovery partition, also using dd.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I think my F11-Restore is a BIOS feature... it shows up with the HP logo as the first time after the machine starts, before any boot-screen appears.

How can I make sure?

[dachte.livejournal.com]

You should probably check internet forums.

Note that the relationship between hardware-ish features and stuff on the disk can be complicated - imagine how the feature might be implemented (there are plenty of ways, from looking for signatures on the partition itself, looking for a distinct partition type, always booting the second partition when F11 sets a flag, etc, and any of this could easily be done with a custom MBR or in something more permanent - in theory any serious futzing with the MBR could confuse the code regardless of where it's located, although that would be bad engineering and is unlikely). If you were to swap hard disks to see if the F11 feature still shows up, that'd tell you something, but ... you're really better off looking for someone who's figured all this out already and/or backing up the MBR/partitions/disk.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Ok, I want to copy the MBR.

Is this doable inside Windows?

[dachte.livejournal.com]

I don't know how to do it under windows, or if windows would even allow most code to do it. It's easier to do it from Linux running on a USB stick - a simple quick "dd".

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

ok, hopefully it will put the copied MBR in the same directory.

[dachte.livejournal.com]

I should clarify. A simple, quick "dd" with the appropriate arguments. It'll put the copy of the MBR wherever you tell it to - "dd" is kind of a swiss army knife for moving raw data around. To take the MBR, you'll want to do something vaguely like:

dd if=/dev/sda of=my_mbr.img bs=512 count=1

(replacing sda with whatever your hard disk raw device is, and changing the of parameter to point to wherever you want the mbr copy)

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Thanks. How do I find out my hard disk raw device?

[dachte.livejournal.com]

If ubuntu offers to mount it, let it do so, then open up a terminal and type "mount" or "df -k", and look for the devicename for wherever it mounted it. Otherwise, you can either poke through dmesg or play a little guessing game - "fdisk -l DEVICENAME" should show you your partition table when you get the devicename right. Things you should guess:

/dev/sda
/dev/sdb
...

/dev/hda
/dev/hdb
...

It's unlikely your hard disk will be anything else.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

I tried fdisk -l on those 4. Results: cannot open /dev/sd*, and for /dev/hd*, it returned empty.

I can see /dev/sdb1, but that's my external HD. Since I booted from a CD, I suspect the HD never mounted...

dmesg returns a huge list of stuff.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I dumped the output of 'dmesg', and it doesn't contain the word "dev", although the string "dev" appears 75 times.

[dachte.livejournal.com]

Oh, the "cannot open" is because you need to be root to do any of this.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

ok. Now I have my_mbr.img, which is 512 bytes long. Is this correct?

I'm saving it to the external HD. Would it be easy to recover my MBR now, in case it gets damaged?

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Done. My image is 512 bytes.

What tool can I use to double-check what an MBR image has?

Thanks!

[dachte.livejournal.com]

There are no real tools for checking that - you *may* be able to persuade fdisk to see it with enough gymnastics, but that's not something simple enough that I can walk you through it.

If you ever need to restore it, just do something like:
dd if=/path/to/image.img of=/dev/sda
(or whatever the devicename is). Don't do this unless you have to!

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I can't tell if it's using Parted underneath.

[chrisamaphone]

it is (or at least was as of 8.04, and i don't see any reason why they'd change).

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I am using 8.04. Will my Ubuntu installation automatically offer to dual boot, if I leave my Windows partition there?

[chrisamaphone]

yep!

[gwillen.livejournal.com]

The claim that leaving the recovery partition on can cause boot problems appears to me to be lies and bullshit. I can't speak to what you need to preserve for it to remain functional, though.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I've added an update to the bottom of the post. Any comments?

[alanv]

Ew.
*has an HP laptop with such a partition*
That recovery partition thing is the worst idea ever.

Your laptop probably has a "make recovery DVD disc" feature. I would alternately suggest doing that and then wiping the recovery partition.

Also, if your only concern is to be able to fix/reinstall Windows, you can buy an XP disc from the CMU bookstore for around $40.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I bought my laptop used, and when I try this, I get:

<< A set of recovery discs has been created for this PC. Only one set
is allowed per PC. >>

In case I lose the Recovery Partition, I would need install discs for WinXP Tablet Edition. Also, I am no longer at CMU.

[dachte.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, it's very easy to trick the recovery disk making program - if you look in the right place, you can find the ISOs it makes, and when they're complete (while the disk is burning), you can copy them to another file. The program normally deletes the ISOs afterwards and refuses to make them again though, so this advice may be a bit late.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

yup. Too late!

I've emailed the guy who sold me the laptop.

[phoenix1701.livejournal.com]

Hm. Sounds like you might have a case for installing Ubuntu via Wubi -- that way, Ubuntu becomes an option in your Windows boot menu, and you don't need a separate partition at all. Disk performance is somewhat affected by this, but in my experimentation with Wubi I never noticed any degradation whatsoever.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

That is an interesting option.

But Wikipedia says hibernating isn't supported... which is a big deal for me.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but Wubi failed.