Re: completely stand-alone grub (legacy or new) boot floppy - how?

[adrian15]

adrian15 wrote:

Just some details that I've missed...
* END * * *
> > Whether copy all files to /boot/grub/ on the floppy?
>
> If the floppy is only for grub and you do not want more to do with it... 
> you can copy all of the files because they don't make any problem. They 
> don't ocuppy too much space and can serve as a backup. You know although 
> usually floppies are vfat... your partition might be reiserfs or ext2.
>
> If size matters...
> However if your floppy is vfat (fat or fat32) you can leave only: 
> fat_stage1_5, menu.lst (optional), splash.xpm.gz (optional) stage1 and 
> stage2.

If you decide to copy splash.xpm.gz because you're obviously going to
use a copy of your menu.lst on your floppy, you do have to make sure
that this menu.lst in the floppy has the image path relative to floppy
drive not to your hard disk.

So if the line reads as:

splashimage=(hd0,3)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

it should read as:

splashimage=(fd0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

Further more some people copy their kernels/initrd to the floppies. If
you need to use the kernels from the floppy you will have to change its
drive references too in menu.lst.

But be aware... kernels are usually big, especially the ones created
from distro-builders. So... you will probably need to make an small
kernel by compiling it yourself and that it is another tale.

> > I suppose doing it on console (Konsole if on KDE) after "su -".  To run
> > grub just type;
>
>
> > # grub [Enter]
> >
> > > root (fd0) [Enter]
> > > setup (fd0) [Enter]
> > > quit
>
> You're right. You must be root so that you can issue these commands.
> And these are the right commands.

This is true partially. If your system had the /dev/floppy accesible for
the user you do not need to be root for using grub for working with
floppy drives.

For example /dev/fd0 (/dev/floppy does not exists actually, at least, on
my system :) ) in my system has as an owner the group: floppy (with rw
permissions) and my user adrian is in the floppy group.

That means that user adrian can access freely to the floppy disk. And so
all the programs (such as grub) run by the user.

So it is very probable that you won't need in your system to be logged
as a root to use grub on a floppy. And you know this is a good piece of
news. Because usually the less the use the root user the safer you are.

adrian15