Works!

[Karl F. Larsen]

        After putting my Linux on a new 30 GB Hard Drive, I
discovered lilo will not work! I tried several versions without any
success. Rick Moen of SVLUG fame put me in touch with:

        http://www.mandrakeuser.org/install/iboot3.html

and that put me in touch with GRUB. This is at:

        http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/

and I d/l after waiting awhile:

        grub-0.5.96.1.tar.gz

and this tarball was untared with the call:

        $tar xvfz grub-0.5.96.1.tar.gz

and the whole system was in a nice set of directories. I read README
and INSTALL, down to the simple: ./configure, make, make install.

        Grub is in /usr/local/sbin and the rest is in
/usrlocal/share/i386/grub. Make the directory /boot/grub and cp
everything from share to /boot/grub. You will have "stage1, stage2
and several stage3-5 files. Where you compiled Grub there is a
directory doc and there find menu.lst and cp that to /boot/grub.

        Next type info grub and read the information contained. It's
quite good and takes you in small steps to where you have a "lilo"
like boot loader that cares not how big a hard drive is!

        Edit the file /boot/grub/menu.lst with the info for your
system. Save a menu.lst.new file so you can refer to it later as a
reference.

        Re-boot and you will be able to select either dos, win98 or
Linux to boot. Works just fine.

                        My Computer

        Home made with a AX5 motherboard with Award Modular BIOS v4.51G,
256Mb of Ram, 30 GB Hard Drive, MMX200 Intel CPU. Linux is Red Hat
version 6.1 with the 2.2.17 kernel. Also loaded in the first 10gb
partition is win98. A swap partition is /dev/hda2 and Linux is 10 gb
as /dev/hda3.

                        Installation

        I installed Grub using the floppy drive method discussed in
detail in info grub. The floppy worked just fine and transfered grup
to the MBR of the first Hard Drive.

                        Results

        The way Grub boots is controlled by the file
/boot/grub/menu.lst much like the file /etc/lilo.conf did for lilo.
Grub is experimental but all I can say is:

        It was easy to get
        It configured and compiled and installed fast and easy
        It was easy to install
        Documentation is excellent
        It works!


Yours Truly,

         - Karl F. Larsen, address@hidden  (505) 524-3303  -