Grub Manual - suggestions

[Thomas Frayne]

The Grub Manual does not appear to document a way to report documentation 
errors.  Please add a section describing this.

I am attaching a note I just posted to comp.os.linux.setup.   It describes 
the way I installed Grub, and the difficulties I had before getting a 
successful installation.

Please consider adding information to the sections on the install command:
1.  The install command should not be used unless the setup command is not 
adequate for your needs.
2.  Examples of cases where setup will not work are:  ...  (If there aren't 
any, install should be described as an internal command used only by setup).
3.  To use install correctly you need to understand embed, stage1, 
stage1.5, stage2, config_file, real_config_file, ...  See ...

Please give separate descriptions of the syntax for install with just 
stage2 and with both stage1.5 and stage2.  Give an example of each case, 
and a description of the effect of each parameter in the example.  Describe 
when stage 1.5 is needed as part of the install.

I found the "slightly more detail" paragraph incomprehensible, even after 
multiple readings, and even after I saw the commands issued by 
setup.  Please describe what the command does without any options 
first.  Then describe the effect of each option separately.   The most 
confusing thing was the commingling of the descriptions of stage1.5 and 
stage2.  Please keep them separate throughout.

Please describe the parameters and behavior of setup in a way that does not 
require reference to install.  I would prefer it if the install command 
were not even mentioned on the setup description page.  Move the 
description of image_device out of the first paragraph and into a separate 
paragraph.

Please give examples of usage of the setup command with explanations of 
what each example does.


Thomas Frayne

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newbie novice installed Grub on Redhat 7.3 with separate /boot partition, 
dual boot Windows XP

I installed Redhat 7.3 Linux plus Win4Lin 4.0 to use Grub as the boot 
loader for dual boot with Windows XP on a system with 4 SCSI hard 
drives.  The /boot directory was on a separate partition.   Later I added a 
Data Express IDE hard drive enclosure to allow mounting removable IDE hard 
drives, and bought a 40 GB and a 100 GB hard drive to mount in the 
enclosure.  I had booting problems after doing this, starting with the fact 
that my Aopen AX6BC motherboard with Award BIOS would not let me change the 
boot sequence, so the MBR had to be on the mounted removable hard drive.  I 
decided to install Grub on each removable hard drive.  How I did this is a 
long story, but I'll tell the short version first.

After logging on as root, I created the /boot/grub directory and copied to 
it:
        /usr/share/grub/i386-redhat/*, /etc/grub.conf, /sbin/grub
I executed:
        cd /boot/grub
        ./grub
This activated the grub shell.  I issued the grub command:
        setup (hd0)  (hd2,0)
The response was
        Checking "/boot/grub/stage1"    no
        Checking "/grub/stage1"         yes
        Checking "/grub/stage2"         yes
        Checking "/grub/stage1_5"               yes
        Running "embed/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"                22 sectors 
are embedded
        Running "install /grub/stage1 d (hd0) (hd0)1+22" p 
(hd2,0)/grub/stage 2 /grub/grub.conf
I executed
        quit
and rebooted.  The Grub boot menu was displayed, and operated 
correctly.  End of the short version.

If it's this easy, why bother writing this note?  Well, I spent two days 
and multiple tries to figure out how to do it, so I thought others might 
benefit from my experience.

From the Grub Manual, http://www.gnu.org/manual/grub/html_mono/grub.html, 
the setup command syntax is:

setup [--force-lba] [--stage2=os_stage2_file] [--prefix=dir] install_device 
[image_device]

Thus (hd0) specifies the install_device as disk 0, which starts with the 
MBR, and (hd2,0) specifies the image_device, which is the boot partition, 
which is mounted at /boot.  (hd2,0) is partition 0 on drive 2.  The Grub 
names
(hd0)   (hd1)   (hd2)   (hd3) ...       (hd2,0) (hd2,1) ...
correspond to Linux names
hda             sda     sdb     sdc ...         sdb1            sdb2 ...



The response to the setup command indicated that there was no /boot 
directory on the image device, which is the boot partition, (hd2,0), but 
that this partition contains the needed files in the /grub directory.  It 
took several iterations for me to discover that the boot partition is 
treated as the root directory by Grub.  I think that if I had specified 
(hd2,1), which is my root partition, as the image device, the setup command 
would have found the /boot/grub/* files via the root directory and the 
mounted /boot directory.  This is the way a user without a separate boot 
partition would do it.

Next, setup embedded the Stage 1.5 file for the ext2 file system in the 22 
sectors after the MBR.  Finally, it installed stage 1 in the MBR, with 
stage 1.5 in the next 22 sectors, and stage2 and grub.conf left where they 
were.  It patched the installed stage 1.5 with pointers to stage2 and 
grub.conf, I think.  (The description is under the install command in the 
Grub Manual, but I haven't been able to discover how the description fits 
the command issued by setup.  Perhaps p stands for patch, and the remainder 
of the setup command is just copied after the 22 sectors.)

At boot time, after BIOS and SCSI BIOS have done their things, the MBR is 
loaded and given control.  It is only 512 bytes, so all it can do is load 
the first sector of stage 1.5, and give it control.  The first sector of 
stage 1.5 loads the rest of stage 1.5, which loads stage 2, and gives it 
control.  Stage 2 executes and interprets grub.conf, which controls the 
rest of the boot process.

grub.conf was set up during my original install of Linux, and modified 
during installation of Win4Lin.  It displays a menu allowing me to boot the 
original Redhat kernel, the Windows XP boot loader, or the Win4Lin kernel.

My big problem was starting off with the wrong manual.  The GNU GRUB Boot 
Loader LG #64 does not mention the setup command, and has an incomplete 
description of the install command.  Time after time, I studied the 
document, tried to guess at what it meant, and tried doing the install, 
only to get a system that would not boot.  At one point, I got the Grub 
shell booted.  The next boot I had enough information from the grub.conf 
file to manually enter the root, kernel, initrd, and boot commands, and I 
successfully completed the boot.  However, I was unable to find a way to 
have the grub.conf file executed by the boot loader.  At this point I found 
the Grub Manual, http://www.gnu.org/manual/grub/html_mono/grub.html.  Even 
though the install command description advises using setup, I continued 
trying to find a way to use install, without success.  When I finally 
switched to setup, success came very quickly.

I have no idea whether what I came up with is the best solution, but it 
worked.  It seems to me that there should be a GUI (graphical user 
interface) for installing or re-installing Grub, but I was unable to 
discover one.  The Redhat install procedure includes a Grub GUI, so it 
should be trivial to build one to be invocable from Gnome.  Does anyone 
know of an existing GUI?  If not, I'll try to build one myself when I've 
had more than two weeks experience with Linux.