Page 2 of 2 - Grub4dos 'isohybrided' - posted in Grub4dos: Anyone thinking that the title of 'Finder' is not deserved. You are wrong! Writing menu.lst might remain a manual work, but you often get the chance to localize your distro with boot parameters and to avoid annoying boot dialogues. Jul 22, 2016 GRUB4DOS is a bootloader that can be installed by a linux operating system or a Windows operating system and dos and also other OSes. It has compatibility with Grub but it can also be installed on non-linux NTFS/FAT filesystems which are more common on Windows preinstalled PC's. Once the boot menu is displayed the selected menu option can be edited before booting (by pressing the [e] key), however the edits take place in memory and are not written to the configuration file. Sample menu.lst file (included with Grub4dos download).
Table of Contents
GNU GRUB manual
This is the documentation of GNU GRUB, the GRand Unified Bootloader,a flexible and powerful boot loader program for pcs.
This edition documents version 0.97.
This manual is for GNU GRUB (version 0.97,8 May 2005).
Copyright © 1999,2000,2001,2002,2004,2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this documentunder the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 orany later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with noInvariant Sections, with the Front-Cover Texts being âA GNU Manual,âand with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of thelicense is included in the section entitled âGNU Free DocumentationLicense.â
(a) The FSF's Back-Cover Text is: âYou have freedom to copy and modifythis GNU Manual, like GNU software. Copies published by the FreeSoftware Foundation raise funds for GNU development.â
Next: Naming convention,Previous: Top,Up: Top
1 Introduction to GRUB
1.1 Overview
Briefly, a boot loader is the first software program that runs whena computer starts. It is responsible for loading and transferringcontrol to an operating system kernel software (such as Linux orGNU Mach). The kernel, in turn, initializes the rest of the operatingsystem (e.g. a GNU system).
GNU GRUB is a very powerful boot loader, which can load a wide varietyof free operating systems, as well as proprietary operating systems withchain-loading1. GRUB is designed toaddress the complexity of booting a personal computer; both theprogram and this manual are tightly bound to that computer platform,although porting to other platforms may be addressed in the future.
One of the important features in GRUB is flexibility; GRUB understandsfilesystems and kernel executable formats, so you can load an arbitraryoperating system the way you like, without recording the physicalposition of your kernel on the disk. Thus you can load the kerneljust by specifying its file name and the drive and partition where thekernel resides.
When booting with GRUB, you can use either a command-line interface(see Command-line interface), or a menu interface (see Menu interface). Using the command-line interface, you type the drivespecification and file name of the kernel manually. In the menuinterface, you just select an OS using the arrow keys. The menu isbased on a configuration file which you prepare beforehand(see Configuration). While in the menu, you can switch to thecommand-line mode, and vice-versa. You can even edit menu entriesbefore using them.
In the following chapters, you will learn how to specify a drive, apartition, and a file name (see Naming convention) to GRUB, how toinstall GRUB on your drive (see Installation), and how to boot yourOSes (see Booting), step by step.
Besides the GRUB boot loader itself, there is a grub shellgrub (see Invoking the grub shell) which can be run whenyou are in your operating system. It emulates the boot loader and canbe used for installing the boot loader.
Next: Features,Previous: Overview,Up: Introduction
1.2 History of GRUB
GRUB originated in 1995 when Erich Boleyn was trying to boot the GNUHurd with the University of Utah's Mach 4 microkernel (now known as GNUMach). Erich and Brian Ford designed the Multiboot Specification(see Multiboot Specification), because they were determined not to add to the largenumber of mutually-incompatible PC boot methods.
Erich then began modifying the FreeBSD boot loader so that it wouldunderstand Multiboot. He soon realized that it would be a lot easierto write his own boot loader from scratch than to keep working on theFreeBSD boot loader, and so GRUB was born.
Erich added many features to GRUB, but other priorities prevented himfrom keeping up with the demands of its quickly-expanding user base. In1999, Gordon Matzigkeit and Yoshinori K. Okuji adopted GRUB as anofficial GNU package, and opened its development by making the latestsources available via anonymous CVS. See Obtaining and Building GRUB, for more information.
Next: Role of a boot loader,Previous: History,Up: Introduction
1.3 GRUB features
The primary requirement for GRUB is that it be compliant with theMultiboot Specification, which is described in Multiboot Specification.
The other goals, listed in approximate order of importance, are:
Except for specific compatibility modes (chain-loading and the Linuxpiggyback format), all kernels will be started in much the samestate as in the Multiboot Specification. Only kernels loaded at 1 megabyteor above are presently supported. Any attempt to load below thatboundary will simply result in immediate failure and an error messagereporting the problem.
In addition to the requirements above, GRUB has the following features(note that the Multiboot Specification doesn't require all the featuresthat GRUB supports):
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