Bug 38713

Summary:	kdm corupts MBR and (probably) partition tables
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Kenneth Corbin <kenc>
Component:	kdebase	Assignee:	Bernhard Rosenkraenzer <bero>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	Aaron Brown <abrown>
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	high
Version:	7.1
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2001-05-02 06:28:35 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Kenneth Corbin 2001-05-02 06:28:31 UTC

I have Powerquest Boot Magic installed on my MBR.   The first time I asked
kdm to reboot the system, it gave me a list of the partition I could reboot
do from the lilo.conf file.   But simply rebooting back to the standard MBR
did not appear to be an option.   After selecting a DOS paritition that I
really wanted to, the system rebooted and then hung.  After a ctl-alt-del
reboot, I ended up booting strait to the linux partition, Boot Magic no
longer was functioning.

After several attempts to put things back together, and reinstalling Boot
Magic, the (DOS) BM configuration program still isn't working correctly,
and there some as yet undetermined amount of damage to my disks partition
tables.   I'm working with Powerquest support to try to determine what is
broken and whether it can be recovered.   In the meantime I would warn
people not to use the kdm reboot feature under any circumstances.

Comment 1 Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2001-05-02 08:50:49 UTC

If you aren't using LILO, don't ask kdm to configure LILO for you.

Open kcontrol, go System > Login Manager > Sessions, then deselect "LILO > 
Show boot options".

You'll lose the feature of being able to specify which OS/kernel you want to 
boot next time around because this doesn't work with any non-LILO boot 
managers.