Alternative booting

[Les Mikesell]

Karl Larsen wrote:
>    Grub is bad period! I used a rescue cd and when up I typed grub and 
> it came up after a while and I typed this:
> 
> grub> root (hd1,5)
> 
> it said it was a linux partition

This should be where your /boot partition is. And it is best to use the 
1st partition, especially on older PCs where the bios may not be able to 
boot from cylinders about 1024.


> grub> setup (hd1)
> 
> here it wrote out a lot of things that included that it was putting 
> stage 1 on (hd1). I assumbed wrong that grub would use stage 1 on (hd1) 
> but it refuses to use it!
> 
>    Grub will not ever boot from a stage 1 on (hd1) period.

It isn't up to grub to load the 1st stage.  Bios has to do that, and if 
your bios does let you boot from your second drive it will remap it as 
drive 0 for stage 1 to make bios requests.

> To get grub to work I will have to put a stage 1 on the new (hd0) hard 
> drive. What a stupid system!

That's a bios issue.  Grub will happily install things where you tell 
it.  You might be installing a disk that you are planning to move to a 
different position or computer.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com