questions about / request for help with GRUB

[Kareem Shehata]

Richard Dice said:
> Hello, everyone...

Good day, Richard.

> I was hoping someone out there would help me out with some questions
> regarding grub.  I've been using lilo for years for my dual boot system
>  (Win98/Linux) but I've recently upgraded my Windows to WinXP and from
> what I understand this mandates grub rather that lilo.  So, I'm looking
>  to move things over.

I'm using XP with Lilo, no problem.  Actually, I started with Grub, ran
into issues (see previous thread for configs and details), then switched
to lilo.
> I'd like to experiment by first creating a grub floppy -- I figure best
>  to make sure things work there first before I target the MBR of my
> hard  drive.  Once that works then I'll target the MBR.

A grub floppy is a very useful thing to have around, whether or not you
use grub as your normal bootloader.  The grub shell isn't too tricky to
figure out.  All you have to remember is the order of the drives and
partitions.
> I wish there were some "grub recipes" out there that I could copy off
> of;  as it stands, the grub documentation is kind of abstract and seems
>  to assume deep knowledge of booting philosophy, as well as the grub
> way  of doing things.

Have a look at the gentoo docs.  I found this page useful:
<http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml#doc_chap23>

> So, first question:  is there any way to avoid the "grub shell"?  I'd
> like to just specify a file that has all the info in it necessary and
> just go from there.  If this can be done, what should the path&name of
> the file be?  What command line should I invoke grub with to do the
> job?

I don't have the commands on me, but they should be in the gentoo docs. 
Essentially, you write your config file, start grub, tell it where to go,
then tell it to install there.  Something along the lines of:
# grub
grub> root (hd0,1)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit
#

Should do the trick.  Notice that (hd0,1) is your root linux partition
(should translate to /dev/hda2), and (hd0) is the MBR.
> If this is possible, then the first task is making a grub conf file
> that  targets a floppy disk and has boot options for WinXP (on
> /dev/hda1) and  Linux (with a /root partition on /dev/hda2; no seperate
> /boot partition).

Why target a floppy?  Setup a floppy boot disk as a backup, but don't you
want to boot off the harddrive?  Making an emergency disk is as easy as:
# cd /usr/share/grub/i386-pc/
# cat stage1 stage2 > /dev/fd0


Good luck!

Kareem

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