Sorry for the delayed response, regardless, I hope you find it to
be of use.

Dennis Chang writes:
 > I'm trying to install GRUB onto the MBR of my system.  But for now I only
 > want one OS installed, ie. Windows.  Can I do this?

Yes, provided GRUB can access the filesystem where its
configuration file "menu.lst" resides.

In addition, in order to perform the install command, GRUB needs
to be able to access the filesystem where its stage2 resides, and,
this stage2 file must exist at boot time.

 > My simple question should be yes however I have tried to install GRUB but I
 > get errors.  For instance, I've read (in your documentation) that stage1
 > loads stage2.  Correct me if I'm wrong but stage2 is dependent on a GRUB
 > supported filesystem.  Thus, in my case, I should install fat_1.5 onto the
 > sectors after the stage1.  In this way I *should* have the menu.lst and the
 > grub shell available to me at boot time?
   ^^^^^^^^^^

Please be aware of using the correct terminology here - the "grub
shell" refers to the UNIX program "/sbin/grub", which is an
emulator for the boot time GRUB command program.

 > What I've done is used a GRUB boot floppy to boot and run setup (hd0) from
 > the GRUB shell.  Since fd0 is root and the stage1 and stage2 files are in
 > place it checks them, embeds a stage1.5, and installs stage1, stage1.5 and
 > menu.lst.  And I reboot with an error message, error 17.

So setup embeds the stage1.5 onto your (hd0) drive, and also edits
the embedded stage1.5 with the location of the stage2 file, which
exists on the boot floppy, but not anywhere on any of your Windows
partitions.

You need to put the stage2 on some filesystem that is available to
GRUB at boot time.

In addition, there is no need for a stage1.5 for your situation.

So you need to locate a partition with a filesystem where to store
the stage2, menu.lst, and also the stage1 (for future installation
flexibility).

Easy - boot the GRUB boot floppy, then hit ESC, in order to get to
GRUB command mode (you might have already done this in order to
have run the setup command).

Next, you must find a suitable filesystem for GRUB's files, here
is how to do this, eg,

  grub> root (hd
                |hit TAB here

   Possible disks are:  hd0 hd1 hd2

GRUB will print the BIOS drives that it can access, then for each
such BIOS drive, do the following, eg,

  grub> root (hd0,
                  |hit TAB here

   Possible partitions are:
     Partition num: 0,  Filesystem type is fat, partition type 0x6
     Partition num: 2, [BSD sub-partitions immediately follow]
       BSD Partition num: 'a',  Filesystem type is ffs, partition type 0xa9
       BSD Partition num: 'b',  Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xa9
       BSD Partition num: 'e',  Filesystem type is fat, partition type 0xa9
       BSD Partition num: 'f',  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xa9
       BSD Partition num: 'g',  Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xa9
       BSD Partition num: 'h',  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xa9
       BSD Partition num: 'i',  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xa9
       BSD Partition num: 'j',  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xa9
       BSD Partition num: 'k',  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xa9
     Partition num: 3,  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
     Partition num: 4,  Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x82
     Partition num: 5,  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
     Partition num: 6,  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
     Partition num: 7,  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
     Partition num: 8,  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

GRUB will print the partitions and filesystems that it can access.

Now you need a way to copy stage1, stage2, and menu.lst (as binary
files) to the appropriate filesystem.  I will leave this part to
your intelligence and creativity.

Then, you need to execute GRUB's install command, here is the way
that I do this from my menu.lst file,

  # Installation steps for GRUB
  # Entry 17:    Install Grub to floppy [fd0]
  title   Install Grub to "A:" [fd0] MBR - stage2 on [(fd0)/boot/grub/]
  root     (fd0)
  install  /boot/grub/stage1 (fd0)  /boot/grub/stage2  p /boot/grub/menu.lst

  # Entry 18:    Install Grub to MBR [hd0]
  title   Install Grub to "C:" [hd0] MBR - stage2 on [(hd0,0)/boot/grub/]
  root     (hd0,0)
  install  /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0)  /boot/grub/stage2  p /boot/grub/menu.lst

So you need to replace the string "boot/grub" with wherever you
decided to put GRUB's files.  Note that this is relative to the
specified root device, which in my case is (hd0,0), ie, the first
partition on the first BIOS hard drive.  And the stage2 file needs to
be a system file, ie, Windows must be inhibited from moving it
around under defrag operations, etc.

And you need to remember the install commands from stanza #18
above, in order to be able to type them in manually to GRUB from
its command mode,

    root     (hd0,XXX)
    install  /YYY/stage1 (hd0)  /YYY/stage2  p /YYY/menu.lst

GRUB is very flexible, there are other possibilties, but I tried
to keep this reply as simple as possible.  After are able to boot
Windows from your hard drive with GRUB, then you can read about
GRUB's install command (from the GRUB info manual) for other
scenarios.

-- 
Jeff Sheinberg



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