GRUB as linux LOADLIN???

[John Sutton]

Hi there

I'm trying to find a way to boot a linux kernel from an already running linux
system *without* returning control to the BIOS i.e. without rebooting the
system.  I suppose what I really need is a linux port of LOADLIN?

Anyhow, I'm hoping it might be possible to do this with GRUB?  So, I've built
and installed v0.91 and am using the grub executable to try to achieve this
result.  But no luck so far ;-(  Here is my script:

----------------------------
/usr/local/sbin/grub \
        --no-config-file \
        --no-curses \
        --no-floppy \
        --read-only \
        --batch <<-EOF

        root (0x80,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.2.19
        boot

EOF
----------------------------

And here is the output it produces:

--------------------------
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.

    GRUB  version 0.91  (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

 [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported.  For the first word, TAB
   lists possible command completions.  Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
   completions of a device/filename. ]

grub> 

grub> root (0x80,0)
 Filesystem type is fat, partition type 0xb

grub> kernel /vmlinuz-2.2.19
   [Linux-bzImage, setup=0xe00, size=0x9e791]

grub> boot
------------------------------

That looks good to me?  Only problem is, it doesn't actually *boot* the kernel
- the "boot" command doesn't do anything and the script just returns ;-(

Is the grub executable just some kind of simulator?  Am I wasting my time
trying to make GRUB do this?

TIA
John

***************************************************
John Sutton
SCL Internet
URL http://www.scl.co.uk/
Tel. +44 (0) 1239 711 888
***************************************************