In order to install GRUB as your boot loader, you need to first
install the GRUB system and utilities under your UNIX-like operating
system (see Obtaining and Building GRUB). You can do this either
from the source tarball, or as a package for your OS.
After you have done that, you need to install the boot loader on a
drive (floppy or hard disk). There are two ways of doing that - either
using the utility grub-install (see Invoking grub-install) on a UNIX-like OS, or by running GRUB itself from a
floppy. These are quite similar, however the utility might probe a
wrong BIOS drive, so you should be careful.
Also, if you install GRUB on a UNIX-like OS, please make sure that you
have an emergency boot disk ready, so that you can rescue your computer
if, by any chance, your hard drive becomes unusable (unbootable).
GRUB comes with boot images, which are normally put in the directory
/usr/lib/grub/i386-pc. If you do not use grub-install, then
you need to copy the files stage1, stage2, and
*stage1_5 to the directory /boot/grub, and run the
grub-set-default (see Invoking grub-set-default) if you
intend to use `default saved' (see default) in your
configuration file. Hereafter, the directory where GRUB images are
initially placed (normally /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc) will be
called the image directory, and the directory where the boot
loader needs to find them (usually /boot/grub) will be called
the boot directory.
