Re: Does grub have to write to the boot device to boot a system?

[walt]

Paul Albrecht wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-03-17 at 12:14 -0700, walt wrote:
> > Paul Albrecht wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > A question: Does grub have to write to the boot device to boot a system?
> > > If not, is there an option to inhibit grub from writing to the boot
> > > device?

> > If I knew your motivation for asking perhaps I could give you a better
> > answer.

> More specifically, I'm booting linux with grub and have setup a separate
> boot partition. After I boot the system, I md5sum'ed the boot device and
> compared it with one saved from a prior boot.

That last bit needs more details.  Explain exactly what you mean by md5sum'd
the boot device.  What exactly do you type on the commandline?

> They're always different.
>
> I think grub is writing the boot sector because I md5sum'ed all the
> files in my boot partition and they remain unchanged over a boot.
>
> Any idea why grub would be writing to the boot sector or is there some
> other explanation?