Creating grub/grub2/grldr.mbr bootrom with makerom

[Bean]

makerom is a new tool in the GRUB Utilities project. It can be used to
create bootrom image using grub legacy, grub2 and grldr.mbr.

grub legacy/grub4dos:
makerom rom_xxx.img stage2 grub.bin

grub2:
makerom rom_xxx.img core.img grub2.bin

grldr.mbr:
makerom -s 0 rom_xxx.img grldr.mbr grldr.bin

rom_xxx.img stands for one of the following files:

rom_isa.img: Header for ISA bootrom
rom_pci.img: Header for PCI bootrom
rom_zisa.img: Header for ISA bootrom, support lzma decompression
rom_zpci.img: Header for PCI bootrom, support lzma decompression

To enable lzma, you should use option -z, and choose one of the
headers that supports lzma:

makerom -z rom_zisa.img stage2 grub.bin

As bootrom has 64K size limit, for image larger than 64K, you must use
compression. For example, the uncompressed stage2 for grub 0.97 is
98K, after compression, image reduced to about 50K.

Also note that compression is performed by external lzma program, you
need to install the lzma package before using the compression
function.

To test the bootrom in qemu:

qemu -option-rom grub.bin ...

Other options supported by makerom:

-m message
The message to display.

-t timeout
Timeout in seconds, default value is 2.

-k key
Hot key, default value SPACE.

-d edx
The value of %edx registry, default value 0.

-s skip
Number of bytes to skip at the beginning of input file, default value
512, which is correct for stage2 and core.img. For grldr.mbr, you
should set this value to 0.

-z
Use lzma to compress input file.

-p parm
Extra options for lzma, it can be used to adjust compression ratio.
The program to invoke is lzma in windows, and lzma_alone in Linux. The
default command line is:

lzma_alone e -si -so

-v
Show verbose information.

You can download source code and windows binaries at:

http://download.gna.org/grubutil/

-- 
Bean