install mbr without running install-grub ?

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Tue, 6 Jul 2004, John Minson wrote:

> Let me restate the question. The /boot dir on hd1 has all of the
> stages,kernel,grub conf files but hd1 has no 'mbr/boot block ...' .
> Currently the bios says to boot from hd0 . I want to change the bios
> setting to boot from hd1 but hd1 is not currently 'bootable' . How do I
> make hd1 'bootable' from a bios standpoint without running grub-install
> .

There are lots of things one can do with grub, but in the end, grub must
be installed in the MBR or the active partition's boot record on the disk
the BIOS wants to boot from.  In addition, it takes some special hacking
to make grub find its components and config file if they are not also on
that drive.

Within grub.conf, it is possible to specify that the drives be re-mapped
so that they appear to the BIOS as reversed, which you may want to do if
you have Windows on your second drive.  Details at
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue64/kohli.html.



> John Minson
> Senior J.O.A.T.M.O.N
> Scientific Research Corporation
> 3860 Faber Place Drive
> Suite 100
> North Charleston,SC,29405
>
> jminson at scires.com
> (843) 740-3336 (office)
>
> >>> akabi at speakeasy.net 07/06/04 10:32AM >>>
> On Jul 6, 2004 at 09:54, John Minson in a soothing rage wrote:
>
> >My system has 2 drives. hd0 has win98, hd1 FC2. Currently I boot off of
> >hd0 (mbr installed by FC2 installl process)  .
> >Is there a way to install the mbr onto hd1 without running install-grub ?
> Sure, use grub-install instead (-:. But seriously, if you do
> not like grub, you will have to use another boot loader. lilo
> and boot magic come to mind. If you do like grub, I suggest
> installing it on hd1.
>
> N.Emile...
>

-- 
		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs