USB disk

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I am using my /GNU/Linux USB interface to create compact flash disks to
be used as the boot disk in an embedded Linux system.

I have found no way to get grub installed on these disks while mounted
in the USB compact flash card reader/writer.  Instead, I have to install
the CF disk and the primary ide disk on another system and boot with a
GRUB floppy to transfer GRUB to the cf disk.

It seems to me that GRUB should be able to do this directly while the CF
disk is in the USB connector.

Have I done something wrong or overlooked something to make GRUB install
itself into the CF, while connected to the USB RW holder?

Also, I find the "stage_1.5" documentation and usage to be extremely
obtuse.  I have installed GRUB onto a number of my IDE disks from a
booted GRUB floppy.  There is no stage_1.5 available or installed, yet
everything works OK when the IDE disk is subsequently booted.  I just
ignore the "missing stage_1.5" message from GRUB during the install
process.  At one time, I included a stage_1.5 on my
/boot/grub/directory, in order to make the message go away.  However,
the disk then refused to boot -- it hung up accessing stage_1.5. 
Thereafter, I just ignored stage_1.5 and everything works fine.  What am
I missing here?

I thank you all for making GRUB available.  I stopped using LILO some
time ago and switched all of my systems to GRUB.