
Kill and Resurrect the Master Boot Record #2
Chapter 1, Booting Linux
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5
HACK
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When you boot into the Smart Boot Manager, you can configure the soft-
ware from within the program with a simple-to-use text-based windowing
interface.
HACK
#2
Kill and Resurrect the Master Boot Record Hack #2
How to (carefully) back up and restore the Master Boot Record (MBR).
The MBR is a 512-byte segment at the very beginning (the first sector) of a
hard drive. This segment contains two major parts: the boot code in the first
446 bytes and the partition table (plus a 2-byte signature) in the remaining
66 bytes. When you run lilo, grub-install,orfdisk /mbr in DOS, it writes to
these first 446 bytes. When you run cfdisk or some other disk-partition pro-
gram, it writes to the remaining 66 bytes.
Writing directly to your MBR can be dangerous. One typo
or mistake can make your entire system unbootable or even
erase your entire partition table. Make sure you have a
complete backup of your MBR, if not your full hard drive,
on other media (like a floppy or anything other than the
hard drive itself) before you try any potentially destructive
commands.
The MBR is very important and crucial for booting your system, and in the
case of your partition table, crucial ...