I am working with Ubuntu 10 which uses grub2. I am using it in a mixed windows xp/Ubuntu deployment. I am using imaging software to deploy windows and ubuntu to 60 PCs. The imaging software understands grub legacy, but not grub2 yet. I would like to use the windows boot loader to boot into grub2 stage2 directly.
I have a limited understanding of how grub2 works. From what I have read, stage1 is in the mbr and stores a disk block reference to stage2. stage1 is loaded into memory and executed by the bios. stage1 loads stage2 from the disk block reference and executes stage2. The first option that I tried was to install grub into the mbr, capture the mbr using dd, copy the file to my windows partition, and add a reference to it in my windows boot.ini file. This worked and I was able to boot into Ubuntu. However, when I installing the same file on other PCs, I wasn't able to get them to boot. My imaging utility may not be putting the files at the same disk block that grub stage1 expects. So then I started looking at finding a way to load grub stage2 directly from the windows boot loader. The windows boot loader doesn't seem to care about the size of the file, it can be larger than 512 bytes. At least, I found examples of other OSes and configurations that made use of a larger file. I have been trying to figure out how to build a grub stage2 file that can be directly loaded by the windows boot loader. I don't really want to embed the configuration file unless that is a requirement. I would prefer that when grub stage2 is loaded by the windows boot loader, that it would look in the linux partition for it's configuration file. The partitions are identical in location, size, and layout on all 60 PCs. Linux is always installed on (hd0, 3). I was trying to use the grub-mkimage utility to build a stage2 file that I could pass to the windows boot loader. I have tried building it with different combinations of modules, but without success. At this point, I am assuming that stage1 must do some additional work that I am missing or I am missing a module that I need or some other detail. This is an example of one of my attempts: grub2-mkimage -p (hd0,3)/boot/grub -o grub2stage2.bin boot ext2 I tried adding additional modules that I thought might be relevant. I also tried the core.img file that Ubuntu uses. So far, I have been unsuccessful. Is it possible to directly load stage2 from the windows boot loader using the grub utilities? Any assistance that you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Thank you Shawn Campbell Malone University _______________________________________________ Help-grub mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-grub
