Installing grub2 bootloader in fd0

[drs305]

I'm almost afraid to ask, but if you feel up to it what are the chances of finding the code needed to boot from grub> to my Windows XP OS which is on (hd0,2) i.e. dev/sda2 which is an ntfs partition?

On grub2 bootup it is shown as:

Windows NT/2000/XP (loader) (on /devsda2)

Glad you were able to boot. As far as Windows, does running "sudo update-grub" not find and add Windows to the menu? It should be done automatically. If it isn't found by update-grub, you can make an entry in /etc/default/40_custom.

The normal commands in a Grub 2 menuentry would be the following. Replace the X's with the UUID of sda2. You can get the UUID by running "sudo blkid | grep sda2". Insert just the alphanumeric characters in the UUID section.

If you plan on typing this in the Grub command line, you don't have to enter the "search" line - just everything between the { }s:

menuentry "Windows XP" {
insmod ntfs
set root=(hd0,2)
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set XXXXXX-XXX-XXXX
chainloader +1
}

If you manually add this entry to /etc/grub.d/40_custom, run "sudo update-grub" to get it into the grub.cfg menu.

If XP won't load, you may need to use the XP CD to help restore Windows. Here is the link:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1014708

[agrimstad]

I'm almost afraid to ask, but if you feel up to it what are the chances of finding the code needed to boot from grub> to my Windows XP OS which is on (hd0,2) i.e. dev/sda2 which is an ntfs partition?

On grub2 bootup it is shown as:

Windows NT/2000/XP (loader) (on /devsda2)

I took my grub2 boot floppy over to a windows xp computer and booted windows as follows:

sh:grub> set root=(hd0,1)
sh:grub> chainloader +1
sh:grub> boot

This probably won't work for you, but it's close. The issue is getting the root= line correct and you may have to experiment. Perhaps you'll need to set root to (hd0,2).

By the way, I also booted windows with an older grub1 boot floppy thusly:

grub> root=(hd0)
grub> chainloader +1
grub> boot

Good luck.

[oldtraveler]

Yes. That works perfectly - using in my case (hd0,2)

Thank you.

[Browser_ice]

Isn't there a way not to have to type the commands at the grub2 prompt ?

I did :
grub-mkrescue --overlay=/boot/grub --image-type=floppy GRUB2.img
dd if=GRUB2.img of=/dev/fd0

but when I boot with the floppy, it just brings me into the Grub2 prompt. I don't want to have to type in commands everytime.

[JustZisGuy]

The commands to create a Grub 2 Ubuntu recovery disk / boot floppy are all different in Ubuntu 10.04. I also tried the start up manager and that failed to create a rescue floppy.

After some messing around and searching, this set of commands creates a bootable floppy disk with the current grub boot configuration for 10.04 - which in my case included the boot menu with all of my partitions.

mkdir /tmp/fdroot
mkdir /tmp/fdroot/boot
mkdir /tmp/fdroot/boot/grub
cp /boot/grub/grub.cfg /tmp/fdroot/boot/grub
cd /tmp
grub-mkrescue --output=grub2.img fdroot
sudo dd if=grub2.img of=/dev/fd0

The disk this creates does not use a standard file system so it is not possible, as far as I can tell, to edit the boot configuration directly on the disk from another computer.

[RachelWoulf]

Many thanks JustZ 10/4

[formerlypoliticalusername]

hi everyone:sorry because my poor english.I heve installed LinusMint9 and STARTUP-MANAGER allways says Error.Then I installed by Synaptic grub-rescue-pc
################################################## #################
GRUB bootable rescue images, version 2 (PC/BIOS version)

This package contains two GRUB rescue images that have been built for use with
traditional PC/BIOS architecture:

- grub-rescue-floppy.img: floppy image.
- grub-rescue-cdrom.iso: El Torito CDROM image
################################################## #################
then typed in terminal:
fdformat /dev/fd0
mkfs -t msdos /dev/fd0
dd if=/usr/lib/grub-rescue/grub-rescue-floppy.img of=/dev/fd0

then sudo reboot y it worked fine.

[drs305]

hi everyone:sorry because my poor english.I heve installed LinusMint9 and STARTUP-MANAGER allways says Error.Then I installed by Synaptic grub-rescue-pc
################################################## #################
GRUB bootable rescue images, version 2 (PC/BIOS version)

This package contains two GRUB rescue images that have been built for use with
traditional PC/BIOS architecture:

- grub-rescue-floppy.img: floppy image.
- grub-rescue-cdrom.iso: El Torito CDROM image
################################################## #################
then typed in terminal:
fdformat /dev/fd0
mkfs -t msdos /dev/fd0
dd if=/usr/lib/grub-rescue/grub-rescue-floppy.img of=/dev/fd0

then sudo reboot y it worked fine.

Thank you for mentioning this aznarwarcriminal. There is a lot of Grub2 troubleshooting here on the forums and I think we sometimes forget about this recovery option.

[curtis_mccauley]

drs305: Please help here, if you can.

I have the same problem as Browser_ice, but in my case the the problem is more or less fatal, as I explain below:

Isn't there a way not to have to type the commands at the grub2 prompt ?

I did :
grub-mkrescue --overlay=/boot/grub --image-type=floppy GRUB2.img
dd if=GRUB2.img of=/dev/fd0

but when I boot with the floppy, it just brings me into the Grub2 prompt. I don't want to have to type in commands every time.

I cannot type in commands at boot time. I have a headless system. No keyboard. No mouse. No monitor. Just an ethernet connection to the LAN and from there to the Internet. I communicate with this system using RDC for Windows and VNC for Ubuntu, if I need a graphical interface. Otherwise, there is SSH.

Back in the day, we had this great tool called GRUB (now called "GRUB Legacy"). It was comparatively easy to understand and to configure. Just one file, MENU.LST. I could edit it with any text editor. If I wanted, I could create a specific floppy to boot any OS installed on my computer. For example, I could create one floppy that booted my Windows partition by default and another floppy that booted my Ubuntu installation by default. All I had to do was to put the right floppy in the drive. I could even leave the Windows boot loader on my hard drive if I preferred it over GRUB.

Now, with GRUB2, at least in terms of ease of use and configuration, we have taken a great step backward.

My main problem is this: I see no way to create a boot floppy that boots just one OS.

I can, thanks to the package grub-rescue-pc, create a boot floppy disk that will bring up a menu of a variety of operating systems that may or may not be installed in my machine, and for each a generic script to boot that OS. I can pick one with my keyboard from the list on the screen, and hope that the generic script works....

Or at least I could pick one with my keyboard if I had a keyboard attached and a monitor to see what I was choosing.

This is progress?

To be fair, the rescue floppy does sort of work. The rescue floppy has a timeout for user input of about 30 seconds or so. When that time expires, it then starts trying to boot various operating systems that might be installed, until it finds one that boots.

You would think that it would try a linux boot first, given that the rescue disk image is part of Ubuntu, and thus it is more or less likely that Ubuntu is installed somewhere on the host computer.

But, no, the first OS that the GRUB2 rescue disk tries to boot is, of all things, GNU Hurd.

What were they thinking?

Heaven forbid that someone had installed both GNU Hurd and Ubuntu, but for some reason got the GNU Hurd installation screwed up and totally broken. Then, the "rescue" disk would have essentially dumped them on a deserted island.

As it turns out, Linux comes pretty early in the list of OSes that the "rescue" disk tries to boot, either second or third, I think. So getting stranded is not as likely as it might have been otherwise.

Lucky for me, the "rescue" disk does manage to boot my Ubuntu installation, after the delays mentioned above.

Here is my plea, to anyone out there: Do you understand GRUB2 well enough to make a GRUB2 floppy disk that will directly boot (i.e., no trial and error) either (a) my Ubuntu installation or (b) my Windows installation?

If so, please share your knowledge.

Thanks.

[drs305]

curtis_mccauley,

Welcome to the Ubuntu forums.

Much of what I know about Grub2 I've learned from experimentation. Unfortunately I have no floppy drives so your project is not something I can play with.

However, since you seem to be able to create a bootable floppy and only have problems with the way the menu is presented, it seems that there should be a solution.

The way I would approach this is to create a folder with all the Grub files you need and alter the grub.cfg file within the folder/subfolders to suit your desires. If grub-mkconfig builds the image according to the files within the build folder hopefully it would also incorporate the grub.cfg contents located therein.

The Grub2 manual discusses how to use an "iso" folder content (as an example) to build the image file. I'd refer to that method and see if it applies to your case. The linked section (3.2) discusses a bootable CD, but I would suspect you can modify the command to apply to the floppy as well. You might also take a look at the previous section (3.1), which discusses creating a floppy.

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...ble-CD_002dROM