[Courses][Linux commands] installing GRUB without a floppy disk

[Carla Schroder]

One more GRUB thing: what these things mean in menu.lst:

title		Libranet GNU/Linux, kernel 2.4.21 
root		(hd0,5)
kernel	/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.21 root=/dev/hda6 ro

'title' is anything you want- you must have some kind of title, to identify 
the entry, and to tell GRUB where the start of each entry is.

'root' is a continual source of confusion. Hopefully this will clear it up. In 
GRUB-speak, 'root' points to the 'root device.' This has a dual meaning:

1. it points to the location of the boot images, usually a partition 
containing /boot/grub/stage1
2. it also points to the root filesystem

So, the meaning of 'root' is entirely contextual. In menu.list, the 'root' 
line means 'this is where /boot/grub/stage1 is'
On the 'kernel' line, 'root' means 'the root filesystem'

On a single-Linux system, this is easy. Most likely /boot is a directory on 
your root filesystem:

$ ls /
bin   cdrom   dev  floppy  initrd  mnt  proc  sbin    tmp  var  
boot  cdrom1  etc  home    lib     opt  root  shared  usr  

$ ls /boot
System.map-2.4.21  boot  grub  config-2.4.21  splash.xpm.gz  vmlinuz  
vmlinuz-2.4.21

$ ls /boot/grub
device.map     ffs_stage1_5  menu.lst.adminmenu-old  reiserfs_stage1_5  
vstafs_stage1_5
e2fs_stage1_5  jfs_stage1_5  menu.lst~               stage1             
xfs_stage1_5
fat_stage1_5   menu.lst      minix_stage1_5          stage2

So, this is simple- the boot images and kernel, or kernels, and root 
filesystem are all on the same partition. On my Libranet system, this 
is /dev/hda6. So my root device is (hd0,5) and the root filesystem, on the 
kernel line, is root=/dev/hda6

If I install other Linuxes, and I do not have a separate /boot partition, then 
the 'root' device is always on the root filesystem of each Linux. Let's say I 
install another Linux on /dev/hda2. It looks like this:

title		Fedora1
root		(hd0,1)
kernel	/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.24 root=/dev/hda2 ro

Now, if you have a separate /boot partition, the root device is always in 
the /boot partition. I like to put it on /dev/hda1. So the above two entries 
would look like this:

title		Libranet GNU/Linux, kernel 2.4.21 
root		(hd0,0)
kernel	/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.21 root=/dev/hda6 ro

title		Fedora1
root		(hd0,0)
kernel	/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.24 root=/dev/hda2 ro

The kewlest bit is you can test this all out in GRUB's command shell, without 
having to edit menu.lst until you have it all figured out.

-- 
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Carla Schroder
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