Detect if it's lilo boot loader or grub?

Question

Without rebooting, is it possible to tell if the boot loader currently present was LILO. GRUB 0.97 or GRUB 1.9X?

I was thinking about reading MBR, but not sure about it. Just by checking the files on system, i.e /etc/lilo.conf doesn't testify anything

Any ideas?

And if it's not in the MBR then that won't work anyways. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Dec 16 '12 at 03:43 — Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams, Dec 16 '12 at 03:43
@jippie Arch, and I think it doesn't matter ... – daisy Dec 16 '12 at 12:12 — daisy, Dec 16 '12 at 12:12

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

5

You can use grep on your MBR to figure out:

sudo dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 2>&1 | grep GRUB
sudo dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 2>&1 | grep LILO

Only one of those should return a match.

For more information and other ways to figure out, check this answer in askubuntu.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

Community

answered Dec 16 '12 at 10:19

balkian

1

I wasn't expecting strings in the MBR, that was awesome! – daisy Dec 16 '12 at 12:12

1 Answers1