Grub dual boot - at grub prompt

[TomSlick]

Hi,

I wish to use grub on floppy to boot XP or W2K (then later perhaps
use a cd or usb). I do not wish to touch the MBR etc on either disk.
hence the floppy.

I have two 80gb disks with the master having XP and the slave W2K.

I've made the grub boot disk which almost works the way I had hoped.

Booting from floppy the boot process stops at the grub prompt.
I then have to type configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst and viola the grub
menu with XP and W2K in it pops up. Perfect from here.

I expected this menu to pop up without having to type in configfile.......

When making the floppy I used an editor and just added the menu.lst
file to the floppy as that file was not there.

Have I missed a step or something else?
Or is this the normal stop? :(

TIA
TomSlick

[saikee]

TomSlick

Welcome to Justlinux !

The menu.lst need to be in either the

/boot/grub or

/grub directory

That is all.

Using a floppy to boot the systems is a smart move. You can do it with a CD or a pen drive too.

[TomSlick]

TomSlick

Welcome to Justlinux !

The menu.lst need to be in either the

/boot/grub or

/grub directory

That is all.

Using a floppy to boot the systems is a smart move. You can do it with a CD or a pen drive too.

Thanks, but having to type configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst (at the
grub prompt) tells me that menu.lst is in the correct place. :)

[saikee]

Post your menu.lst here.

You suggested your menu.lst boots satisfactorily to both XP and Linux but later you indicated it is not there to be found.

The command
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst
does not work alone. You have to declare the partition where Grub can find /boot/menu.lst by the "root" statement.

Thus you could be booting up the floppy but did not use "root (fd0)" but some thing like "root (hd0,1)". In such a case you boot the menu.lst in the hard disk.

[TomSlick]

Post your menu.lst here.

You suggested your menu.lst boots satisfactorily to both XP and Linux but later you indicated it is not there to be found.

The command
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst
does not work alone. You have to declare the partition where Grub can find /boot/menu.lst by the "root" statement.

Thus you could be booting up the floppy but did not use "root (fd0)" but some thing like "root (hd0,1)". In such a case you boot the menu.lst in the hard disk.

OK, here it is!

# The GNU GRand Unified Bootloader

# general configuration:
timeout 10
default 0
fallback 1
color blue/cyan yellow/magenta

# boot sections follow
# each is implicitly numbered from 0
# in the order of appearance below

# (0) WinXP
title WinXP
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

# (1) W2K
title Win2000
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
# end file menu.lst


(I kinda think I have missed something as the documentation says
I just need to add the menu.lst file. What I can do at home tonight
is to put the menu.lst file in /boot and see if that fixes the problem.)

TIA again.
TomSlick

[saikee]

Kind of unusual Grub application as you have no LInux at all but juts using Grub to boot the two MS systems. It will work.

Grub has been written to search for a menu.lst in /boot/grub or /grub and defaults to a Grub prompt if none is found. The /grub is to suit the Red Hat distros and other Linux that use a /boot partition. When the root is pointed to a /boot partition the menu.lst should be inside /grub directory. Overall after the Linux is booted when /boot has been mounted Grub's menu.lst can be found in /boot/grub directory.

If you still have a problem try this at a Grub prompt
root (fd0)
setup (hd0)
chainloader +1
bootThis restores Grub again and tries to chainload the menu.lst.

Sometimes restoring Grub again helps.

[TomSlick]

Hi Again,

Problem solved!! Turns out my procedure was missing one vital step.
I copied all the stage1_5 files to the floppy and then did the (fd0)
commands etc., the message "stage1_5 not found" disappeared

Made me read all the info grub pages instead of skimming them.
Trouble is that I now want to use some other features of grub,
but that's how unix grabs you.

BTW: Menu comes up fine and works a treat.

Thanks for your help!
TomSlick
PS Couple of other gotchas:
files names got truncated when copying
menu.lst had .txt added to it.

[bwkaz]

menu.lst had .txt added to it. This is why Notepad is POSITIVELY EVIL, along with most other Windows programs.

"When I tell you to use this filename, USE THIS FILENAME! DON'T go and add another extension to "help me"! If I wanted another extension, I'D HAVE GIVEN YOU ONE!"

(Then I found out that there is actually a way to prevent Notepad from adding another extension: under "files of type", choose "all files"; then it'll let you save under any filename you want. It also won't mess it up by turning it into UTF-16. Of course you won't even know anything's wrong if Explorer isn't set to show you the extension, which is how they set it by default... GAAAH!)

[jaygee432]

If you're satisfied with your floppy solution, great. But there is another way to leave mbr untouched and use grub to boot windows or other os and not have to mess with floppies, usb sticks, etc. That is grub for dos, which I've used for some time with windows xp. I've had no problems editing menu.lst with wordpad, or you can use a late version of puppy to edit windows files regardless of their attributes in windows, i.e., read only or hidden.