Re: grub core size

[Robert Millan]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 07:41:34PM +0100, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am using grub 2.
> The stage 1 bit of grub, that stores itself in the partition table and
> the following sectors, seems to be quite large.
> I have a HP server system that only has 32 512-bytes sectors free
> before the first partition but the grub core does not fit in there. It
> seems to need more like 64 512-byte sectors.
> 
> Why does grub need so much space on that part of the hard disk ?
> My /boot/grub has been installed on an ext2 partition.
> 
> How difficult would it be to fit the stage 1 into 16384 bytes?
> USB sticks sometimes have similar problems.
> 
> How about two versions of the grub core, one that requires the rest of
> grub to be on an ext2/3 partition, and a larger one that can handle
> other options, e.g. lvm etc.
> Obviously, it is only worth trying that if the ext2 one can get into
> 16384 bytes or 32 sectors.

Did you compile GRUB yourself?

Did you build core.img yourself?  If you did, you should use grub-install
instead.

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."