GRUB: The Grand Unified Boot Loader
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Debian Packages:
grub
Grub
(the GRand Unified Bootloader) is a boot loader
designed to address the limitations of lilo. It makes up
for numerous deficiencies in many PC BIOSs while providing
full-featured command line and graphical interfaces.
Grub
recognises fdisk partitions, can dynamically read
Linux ext2fs, and MSDOS FAT16 and FAT32 filesystems, and can boot
multiboot-compliant kernels (such as GNU Mach), as well as standard
Linux and MS/Windows kernels.
A good introduction to grub is available from
https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub.html and a good guide to
multi-boot setup is
https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Multiboot-with-GRUB.html. This latter
resource looks at multi-booting four operating systems although the
information is still useful if all you want is to multiboot just two.
To switch from lilo
to grub
simply install it
with:
# wajig install grub
# grub-install /dev/hda
# update-grub
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This creates a
/boot/grub/menu.lst file which you might like to review just
to make sure it looks okay. For most simple situations it should be
fine.
For a dual boot with MS/Windows/NT on the first partition and Linux on
the second (like Mint), you may need to change the default
locations of Linux. Look at /boot/grub/menu.lst to see if the
following two lines have been changed:
# kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro
# groot=(hd0,0)
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to
# kopt=root=/dev/hda2 ro
# groot=(hd0,1)
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Also, add to the end of the file:
title Windows NT
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
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Once it looks okay, run update-grub then reboot!
When installing new kernels you can have the new kernel automatically
added to the menu by adding the following lines to
/etc/kernel-img.conf (and in fact making the file look the
same as) :
# Turn off Lilo stuff
do_symlinks = no
do_bootloader = no
# Initrds are OK for GRUB
do_initrd = yes
# Run cool GRUB stuff
postinst_hook = /sbin/update-grub
postrm_hook = /sbin/update-grub
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If you start having problems booting, at the grub
menu
type c to get the command line. Try:
root (hd0,4) (/dev/hda5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-bf2.4 root=/dev/hda5 ro
boot
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More information on using grub is available from the
Linux
Journal.
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