TITLE: GRUB Boot & Rescue Disk - HOWTO LFS Version: All AUTHOR: Daniel Armstrong SYNOPSIS: GRUB is the GRand Unified Bootloader, a boot loader program with many cool features for the PC. It serves as a replacement for the more traditional LILO. This hint shows how to use GRUB to make a combined boot loader and rescue disk for your LFS system. HINT: If you do not currently have GRUB installed on your system, you will need to download the most recent version (ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/grub/grub-0.90.tar.gz) and install it into your chosen working directory. Now we unpack GRUB and install it on our system with the following commands: tar xvzf grub-0.90.tar.gz cd grub-0.90 ./configure --prefix=/usr make make install This will create the necessary executables and support files to create our boot and rescue disk. Grab a spare floppy and do a fresh format and install a filesystem: fdformat /dev/fd0 mkfs -t ext2 /dev/fd0 Now we need to mount our soon-to-be GRUB disk: mount -t ext2 /dev/fd0 /mnt Create the directory and install the files GRUB will need to serve as your boot loader: mkdir -p /mnt/boot/grub cp /usr/share/grub/i386-pc/stage1 /mnt/boot/grub cp /usr/share/grub/i386-pc/stage2 /mnt/boot/grub Now we are going to setup our GRUB floppy to do double-duty as a rescue disk for our LFS system, by placing a copy of the kernel on our floppy. This way if kernel on the hard drive is ever corrupted or trashed, we can use our GRUB boot and rescue disk to get our system up and running again. Copy your kernel to the GRUB floppy: cp /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7 /mnt/boot #Your kernel and location may vary. The final step before we reboot and test our GRUB boot and rescue disk is to install the GRUB tools in the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the floppy. Unmount the floppy but leave it in the drive: umount /dev/fd0 Now type at the command prompt: grub This starts up the GRUB shell environment and changes your # prompt to "grub>". Now enter: root (fd0) setup (fd0) quit Your GRUB boot and rescue disk is now complete. Leave the floppy in the drive and reboot. When the GRUB shell returns type: root (fd0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7 root=/dev/hda3 #Replace MY boot image and root #partition with your own boot Voila! Your LFS system should be up and running now. For a more complete description of GRUB's many features, configuration, and installing GRUB on your hard drive's MBR, see the "Grub-HOWTO" hint at the LFS-Hints website and/or type "info grub" at your command prompt. Thanks to Fabio Fracassi, the author of the "GRUB-Howto" hint, for getting me started with GRUB. August 2, 2001 Daniel Armstrong