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Code Editor : README

This is a small package that may be depended on by any bootloader
installer package to detect other filesystems with operating systems on
them, and work out how to boot other linux installs.

os-prober
--------

All one has to do is Depend on os-prober, and then run the os-prober
command. This command takes no arguments: it will scan all disks available
on the system for other operating systems, and output a list of strings
such as:

/dev/sda1:Windows NT/2000/XP:WinNT:chain
 ^-------^ ^----------------^ ^---^ ^---^
   part.    OS name for boot  short May change: type of boot loader
            loader's pretty   name  required. Usually there is only
            output                  a 'linux' style bootloader or
                                    a chain one for other partitions
                                    with their own boot sectors.

Tests are executable programs in the directory /usr/libexec/os-probes/. Each
test is called once per partition, with the partiton to check as its
parameter, and may output a string as described above, or nothing if it does
not recognise an OS on that partition. Tests return an exit code of 0
if they successfully found an OS, and no further tests will be run on that
partition; or return an exit code of 1 to indicate that no OS was found,
and let the next test run.

Tests that require the partition to be mounted can be placed in
/usr/libexec/os-probes/mounted/. These tests are passed the following
parameters: partition, mount point, filesystem.

Bootloader installer packages will then have to process this output (fairly
trivial) to create valid configuration entries for the bootloader.

Note that os-prober can find other Linux installations, as well as other
operating systems. It does not try to work out all the information needed
to boot Linux (initrd, kernel params, etc). That task is left to
linux-boot-prober.

linux-boot-prober
-----------------

the linux-boot-prober command should be run with a single argument
consisting of a partition that is known to have a linux root filesystem on
it, as returned by the os-prober command. It will try to work out how to
boot that linux installation, and if it is successful, will output one or
more lines in the form:

/dev/sda2:/dev/sda1:Linux:/vmlinuz:/initrd.gz:root=/dev/sda1
 ^-------^ ^-------^ ^---^ ^------^ ^--------^ ^------------^
   root      boot    label  kernel    initrd    kernel params
   part.     part.

The root partition and boot partition may of course be the same. No guarantee
is made that any partitions referred to in the kernel parameters will still be
in the same place after Debian is installed, or that the /etc/fstab of the
system will be right, or that the system will even boot. The initrd field may
be empty if there is no initrd.  The label is whatever label was used in the
boot loader for this linux installation, and it may be quite long or very
short (or nonexistent), and may be inaccurate, confusing, or non-unique. See
TODO for other limitations.

The tests used by linux-boot-prober are in the directory
/usr/libexec/linux-boot-probes/ and also in /usr/libexec/linux-boot-probes/mounted,
and they are called in a similar way as the os-probes described above.
The mounted probes are passed parameters for the root partition, the boot
partition, and the directory the filesystems are mounted in.

linux-boot-prober skips over partitions that are currently mounted on /,
/target, or /target/boot.

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Code Editor : README