Boot Loader Detection: GRUB or LILO?

[Charles Curley]

Is there any way to detect which boot loader is the working one?
Simply detecting whether a grub or lilo package is installed may not
be sufficient, especially in the case where both are installed. I
suppose I could look to see which is more recent, grub.conf or
lilo.conf, but I can think of several scenarios unde which this would
fail.

It's time to update my bare metal recovery scripts
(http://www.charlescurley.com/Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO.html)
to handle grub, and I'd like to detect the current boot loader if
possible.

-- 

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[Mike Klinke]

On Monday 27 October 2003 23:07, Charles Curley wrote:
>  Is there any way to detect which boot loader is the working one?
>  Simply detecting whether a grub or lilo package is installed may not
>  be sufficient, especially in the case where both are installed. I
>  suppose I could look to see which is more recent, grub.conf or
>  lilo.conf, but I can think of several scenarios unde which this would
>  fail.
>
>  It's time to update my bare metal recovery scripts
>  (http://www.charlescurley.com/Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWT
> O.html) to handle grub, and I'd like to detect the current boot loader
>  if possible. 
Would this method be of any use? Use "dd" to read the MBR, assuming 
that's where your boot loader resides.  I know that the word "GRUB" 
will appear; for example:

#dd ibs=512 count=1 if=/dev/hda | grep -i grub 
Binary file (standard input) matches

Someone else will have to pipe up about LILO though...

Regards,  Mike Klinke

[Leonid Mamchenkov]

* Mike Klinke <lsomike(a)futzin.com&gt; [27-Oct-2003 23:28]:
>  On Monday 27 October 2003 23:07, Charles Curley wrote:
>  > Is there any way to detect which boot loader is the working one?
>  
>  Would this method be of any use? Use "dd" to read the MBR, assuming 
>  that's where your boot loader resides.  I know that the word "GRUB" 
>  will appear; for example:
>  
>  #dd ibs=512 count=1 if=/dev/hda | grep -i grub 
>  Binary file (standard input) matches
>  
>  Someone else will have to pipe up about LILO though... 
LILO is also detectable:

[root@monitorus2 root]# dd ibs=512 count=1 if=/dev/hda | grep LILO
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
Binary file (standard input) matches

If you will pipe "dd" output through "strings" before
"grep", you will
see "|lbaLILO", if LILO is installed or "GRUB", if GRUB is installed.

-- 
 Leonid Mamtchenkov.
 http://www.leonid.maks.net

[Doncho N. Gunchev]

>  On Tuesday 28 October 2003 01:39, Leonid Mamtchenkov wrote:
>  * Mike Klinke <lsomike(a)futzin.com&gt; [27-Oct-2003 23:28]:
>  > On Monday 27 October 2003 23:07, Charles Curley wrote:
>  > > Is there any way to detect which boot loader is the working one?
>  >
>  > Would this method be of any use? Use "dd" to read the MBR, assuming
>  > that's where your boot loader resides.  I know that the word "GRUB"
>  > will appear; for example:
>  >
>  > #dd ibs=512 count=1 if=/dev/hda | grep -i grub
>  > Binary file (standard input) matches
>  >
>  > Someone else will have to pipe up about LILO though...
>
>  LILO is also detectable:
>
>  [root@monitorus2 root]# dd ibs=512 count=1 if=/dev/hda | grep LILO
>  1+0 records in
>  1+0 records out
>  Binary file (standard input) matches
>
>  If you will pipe "dd" output through "strings" before
> "grep", you will
>  see "|lbaLILO", if LILO is installed or "GRUB", if GRUB is installed.
Yep, that's nice ;) In addition you might want to see if the boot loader is 
installed in /dev/hda | /dev/sda | /dev/whatever or in /dev/hda1 for example 
if this is a multiboot system (bsd, linux, window$). Long time ago ;))) I 
used the Win9x MBR with active partition /dev/hda1 where my /boot was (saved 
me a lot of pain when I had to reinstall win9x).

There are some more boot loaders I know of:
	aspldr - asploader - it uses some sort of dos booting -> mbr.sys, 
bootsect.sys, aspldr.sys, aspldrcd.sys and mouse.com. It's mbr.sys contains 
only 3 > 4 byte strings: "ro;^\uj", "VPP2" and "MBR
Error". I have one 
ASPLinux arround so if ye are interested I can look further...
	sbm - Smart Boot Manager, which I saw in debian distro as far as I remember. 
It's a nice thing ;) can boot from CD on systems without CD-Rom boot support, 
can be installed on floppy and it can install itself on hdd later... used to 
love it year or two ago...
... and... maybe, this can be solved for fedora by simply putting an 
/etc/bootloader.conf with a single line bootloader="whatever" ;)... just an 
idea ;)

-- 
Regards,
  Doncho N. Gunchev

On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 04:07:15PM -0700, Charles Curley wrote:
>  Is there any way to detect which boot loader is the working one?
>  Simply detecting whether a grub or lilo package is installed may not
>  be sufficient, especially in the case where both are installed. I
>  suppose I could look to see which is more recent, grub.conf or
>  lilo.conf, but I can think of several scenarios unde which this would
>  fail.
>  
>  It's time to update my bare metal recovery scripts
>  (http://www.charlescurley.com/Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO.html)
>  to handle grub, and I'd like to detect the current boot loader if
>  possible. 
The solutions suggested seem too complicated. Just reboot. Unless things
have changed radically the lilo boot screen looks completely different
that the grub boot screen.
-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
715 Stadium Dr.
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200

telephone: [phone]
email:[e-mail]

[Michael Kearey]

Aaron Konstam wrote:
>  On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 04:07:15PM -0700, Charles Curley wrote:
>  
> >Is there any way to detect which boot loader is the working one?
> >Simply detecting whether a grub or lilo package is installed may not
> >be sufficient, especially in the case where both are installed. I
> >suppose I could look to see which is more recent, grub.conf or
> >lilo.conf, but I can think of several scenarios unde which this would
> >fail.
> >
> >It's time to update my bare metal recovery scripts
> >(http://www.charlescurley.com/Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO.html)
> >to handle grub, and I'd like to detect the current boot loader if
> >possible.
>  
>  The solutions suggested seem too complicated. Just reboot. Unless things
>  have changed radically the lilo boot screen looks completely different
>  that the grub boot screen. 
The original post very obviously needs a way to detect Grub and Lilo 
programmatically.

The solutions suggested are appropriate. Maybe you need to read the 
original post carefully.

Cheers,
Michael

[Erik Williamson]

Watchout on this one - I've got a machine here which has had both 
bootloaders installed, and both GRUB and LILO show up in the MBR - but 
if you pipe it through strings - like Leonid said - it looks like you 
will see only see 'lbaLILO' on the machine where it's active.  Here's 
what works for me:

#!/bin/bash
dd ibs=512 count=1 if=/dev/hda 2>&1 | strings | \
	grep GRUB 2>&1 > /dev/null
isgrub=$?
if [ $isgrub -eq 0 ] ; then
     echo "Grub"
else
     dd ibs=512 count=1 if=/dev/hda 2>&1 | strings | \
	grep lbaLILO 2>&1 > /dev/null
     islilo=$?
     if [ $islilo -eq 0 ] ; then
	echo "Lilo"
     else
	echo "Unknown"
     fi
fi



Michael Kearey wrote:
>  Aaron Konstam wrote:
>  
> > On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 04:07:15PM -0700, Charles Curley wrote:
> >
> >> Is there any way to detect which boot loader is the working one?
> >> Simply detecting whether a grub or lilo package is installed may not
> >> be sufficient, especially in the case where both are installed. I
> >> suppose I could look to see which is more recent, grub.conf or
> >> lilo.conf, but I can think of several scenarios unde which this would
> >> fail.
> >>
> >> It's time to update my bare metal recovery scripts
> >> (http://www.charlescurley.com/Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO.html) 
> >>
> >> to handle grub, and I'd like to detect the current boot loader if
> >> possible.
> >
> >
> > The solutions suggested seem too complicated. Just reboot. Unless things
> > have changed radically the lilo boot screen looks completely different
> > that the grub boot screen.
>  
>  
>  The original post very obviously needs a way to detect Grub and Lilo 
>  programmatically.
>  
>  The solutions suggested are appropriate. Maybe you need to read the 
>  original post carefully.
>  
>  Cheers,
>  Michael
>  
>  
>  -- 
>  fedora-list mailing list
>  fedora-list(a)redhat.com
>  http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list 
-- 
e r i k   w i l l i a m s o n                     erik(a)cpsc.ucalgary.ca
  system admin . department of computer science . university of calgary

[Jeremy Katz]

On Tue, 2003-10-28 at 10:39, Erik Williamson wrote:
>  Watchout on this one - I've got a machine here which has had both
>
>  bootloaders installed, and both GRUB and LILO show up in the MBR - but 
>  if you pipe it through strings - like Leonid said - it looks like you 
>  will see only see 'lbaLILO' on the machine where it's active.  Here's 
>  what works for me: 
Be careful.  lbaLILO will only show up if lba32 is enabled in lilo.conf
IIRC

Cheers

Jeremy