Grub 2 Basics

[ranch hand]

You can, when the installer comes to installing the boot loader, have it install on the partition instead of the mbr.

I do not like this. I prefer to have the new installs grub take over. That way I know that it is working and can see if it will pick up ext4 formatted OS'.

If your 10.04 is picked up and you can boot to it you can easily change back to its grub2 by running;

sudo grub-install /dev/sda

from terminal in your 10.04 istall (changing the "sda" to fit your needs)

If not then you will have to chroot into 10.04 from the new OS and do that or;
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2#Recove...20via%20LiveCD

All debian based OS' seem to be picked up great by grub2 with bootable generated menu entries. Some of the others not so good.

I have a menu entry for Mandriva that works in my grub2 intro (see sig) and there are a lot of tips and examples for other OS' in this thread.

I just tried os-prober on the newgrub1.98 to see if Mandriva was picked up right. No, it was not. The generated menu entry has 2 instances of defining the partition. The first one is correct and the second one is incorrect. You can edit this (hit "e") when your menu comes up or have a custom entry that is right.

[kansasnoob]

hey, nice chatter here folks, nice thread.

one thing i have Not seen mentioned, one of you well versed grub folks can maybe address ..

howto install a distro using grub legacy onto my lucid box with grub2 already in place??

i have a single hdd drive with only lucid now and i want to get another distro as a dual boot. but all the current releases, mandrivaOne, fedora12, Suse, debian, all still using grub legacy.

how can i install another one of these distros without the old grub taking over? anyone done this yet? it may be like this awhile until the next round of releases get grub2 in place .. thx for help ..

I always choose to install no bootloader at all. Then I boot into the distro who's grub2 controls the show and run "sudo update-grub". That is usually all it takes.

A couple of times I've had to:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libdebian-installer4

sudo os-prober

sudo update-grub

[ybd]

Hey, thanks for all the great info. Just one question (and I hope it hasn't been asked before - I tried searching...):

How do you hide the rectangular frame around the Grub entries?

[drs305]

Hey, thanks for all the great info. Just one question (and I hope it hasn't been asked before - I tried searching...):

How do you hide the rectangular frame around the Grub entries?

I don't think that is possible at the moment unless you get into theming - I believe the 'frame' is hard-coded into Grub 2.

The good news is that 'theming' is coming along, which allows great customization of the boot screen. There is a thread on GRUB2 theming for lucid? which discusses some Grub 2 alternatives/spinoffs (aka BURG) which can already produce some really nice boot themes.

And the Grub 2 devs hope to have theming ready for the rollout of Lucid, incorporating theming into Grub 1.98.

[ybd]

Thank you for that informative (and ridiculously fast) answer. I'll look into themes.

[peter b]

@drs305

grub2 floppy created with

grub-mkrescue --overlay=/boot/grub --image-type=floppy GRUB2.img
sudo dd if=GRUB2.img of=/dev/fd0

at boot time mssge as follows

GTUB2 loading ...............

then the pc locks; pc reset not working, pc had to be powered down.

could it be because the grub,cfg script in my case still has --no-floppy option present ? like below ?

search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set ........

thank you.

[drs305]

at boot time mssge as follows
GTUB2 loading ...............
then the pc locks; pc reset not working, pc had to be powered down.
could it be because the grub,cfg script in my case still has --no-floppy option present ? like below ?
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set ........

Peter,

I haven't tried making a floppy, but you could check to see if your theory is correct from the Grub 2 menu. Highlight the menu item you want to try, press "e" and then in the search line use the DEL key to remove the "--no-floppy" reference. Then press CTRL-x and see if it will boot.

[peter b]

thanks drs305,

sorry, I wasn't to clear I guess; what it boils down to is that when booting off the floppy created as mentioned, the only thing that I can get is

GRUB2 loading ...............

message then a hard locked pc that must be powered down.

I want to get/end up with a grub shell prompt

sh:grub>

similar with the one I'm getting when ubuntu is fully functional, booted off a hd etc. from the prompt above I'm feeling v comfortable to enter what it takes to get an os booted up.

thank you.

btw. is there any lterature/documentation re this --no-floppy option ?

[drs305]

btw. is there any lterature/documentation re this --no-floppy option ?

I only know of the "--no-floppy" option because it produced errors early on in Grub 2's introduction. One of the bugs had users remove the "--no-floppy" option. That bug has been fixed as far as I know.

Unfortunately I don't know of a location that documents its use. There wasn't anything about it in the GRU Grub manual the last time I looked.
http://grub.enbug.org/Manual#head-21...9f796d6ebc8787

In fact, I searched before responding to your initial post and wasn't able to find anything pertinent.

[peter b]

yes, thanks.

any idea about getting a grub2

sh:grub>

prompt when booting off floppy ? I'm not sure if it is sh:grub> or something similar - never seen it -; as said, booting off grub2 floppy process never finished successfully in my case. I just assume it is so based on the prompt I'm getting when ubuntu is fully functional.

thank you.