I can from "hard won" exerience from my recent dual-boot "hell", tell
you that using "grub-install" made the process easier.
Because I was using an NTFS format on my "winders" hard drive (hda) I
was having trouble getting my system to dual-boot
and had to go about it in a different manner. The NTFS file system
prevented me from writting the grub boot loader to that drive from my
FC4 drive (hdb).
After much hair pulling and searching, I finally found the solution in
the O'Reilly "PC Hacks book"
(Hack #94: http://hacks.oreilly.com/pub/h/2337 ).
I booted to my Linux drive by changing the boot order in BIOS. After
getting my menu.lst (grub.conf) configured I ran "grub-install".
I wrote the grub boot loader sitting on the boot partition (hdb) to a
floppy using the "dd" command and called it "grub.bin".
dd if=hdb1 of=/media/floppy1/grub.bin bs=512 count=1
I changed my boot order in BIOS again and booted into "winders".
Then moved that file into the root "winders" directory. All I had to do
after that was modify the boot.ini
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Home Edition" /fastdetect
c:\grub.bin="Fedora Core 4 Linux"
Every thing is now happy. I can now move forward to one day eliminating
that NASTY "winders" stuff on my first hard drive.
Neil Little, WA4AZL JARS Forever!! ... er TRULUG too!
====================================================
>>>Um, you're thinking of Lilo. You don't have to run grub for the
>>>changes to take effect.
>>>
>>>
>Um, that being said, it does not hurt to re-run grub to
>make sure that the proper bootloader installed on the MBR.
>
>This might be necessary if you recently changed partitions
>around, or perhaps if you installed a new O/S on *any* of
>your partitions (the install process might have written over
>the MBR). I believe the original post said that he recently
>installed FC5.
>
>I think the command you want is "grub-install" and not
>simply "grub". "grub-install" reads the menu.lst file and
>writes the stage1 loader to the MBR. "grub" simply pops
>up a grub command prompt and waits for you to enter the
>arcane grub commands.
>
>
>Alan
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