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Multibooting and Partitioning Experiments

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Armando:
I my experience, Grub works pretty well. What are you trying to do exactly ?

wolf.b:
Hi Armando,

Long versionI have the general goal to write my own boot manager, or to be able to use an existing boot manager which can:
1.) overwrite a particular entry in MBR's partition table with a new entry, that is read from a list that I supply. I have done that using debug.exe successfully. Ranish PM can do that, but is limited to 32 entries.
2.) enumerate all entries in an extended partition table and change the partition type eg from FAT32 to hidden FAT or to unformatted, or even delete the selected partition. At the moment, gdisk.exe can do that in batch mode.

With GRUB, my initial goal is to find out what it can do and to experiment with it. I would like to have a floppy disk that I could use on an old laptop or on a virtual machine. So far my efforts were failures. I have done something like:


--- ---command /c copy /b stage1 + stage2 grub.flp
then write grub.flp to floppy using rawwrite. Result: BIOS POST messages on screen as normal, then screen goes black, then error message displayed at the top of screen: "Error!". I patched my grub.flp like this:


--- ---command /c copy /b grub.flp + bytes.f6 grub.ima
where bytes.f6 is a file that consits entirely of hex value F6. It's size was so that the resulting grub.ima was 1,747,560 bytes in size. Then again rawwrite grub.ima to floppy. Result: BIOS POST messages on screen as normal, then screen goes black, then error message displayed at the top of screen: "Error!"

I was expecting to get a GRUB menu with the ability to manually add/edit new entries. I have found GRUB4DOS and am able to see a menu with edit options. Unfortunately GRUB4DOS lacks documentation, but if I understand the article Experience of Using Grub For DOS correctly, knowing how to use GRUB will help.

In short: I want a floppy with GRUB installed. :)

Now please don't misunderstand the above. I don't ask anybody to do it for me. I will do all the necessary reading myself, not only because it is a topic that interests me since many years. I suspect that my floppy is not all that bad, maybe it lacks just something like menu.lst somewhere. But it is beyond my capabilities to fix it. Reading is going slowly, confusing at times. A little hint how to create the floppy correctly would be much appreciated.


Greetings
Wolf

Armando:
Ok, I admit that this usage of grub is a bit too technical for me. But, yes, a "menu.lst" seems compulsory. There are many many pages on GRUB. Have you read that : http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/grub/grub.htm#_Making_a_Simple_grub_Booter_Floppy ?

wolf.b:
Thank you very much for that link. It says somewhere near the top of the page:

The state of grub's documentation is such that you can't figure it out unless you already know grub.
That catch 22 is the very purpose of this document. This document will to give you enough grub expertise ...
--- End quote ---

This document is for Lunix users only. I think that gave me the last bit of encouragement, that was needed to go ahead and install (x)ubuntu on my hard drive. Version 7.10 has been released just 9 days ago.



Greetings
Wolf

Edit: Also I learned from your link, that I should have been expecting a grub command line interface (prompt) rather than a menu.
Langsam ernährt sich das Eichhörnchen.

Armando:
I wouldn't go for xubuntu if I was you -- I've heard that xubuntu is partially broken. I'd just install Ubuntu -- unless you have a very old machine (less than 256mb RAM). In anycase, try the live CDs, maybe, and see for yourself.

 :)

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