[vox-tech] grub questions

[Matt Roper]

On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 05:41:03PM -0400, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
...
>    title		Windows NT/2000/XP
>    root		(hd1,0)
>    savedefault
>    makeactive
>    chainloader	+1
> 
> I'd like to put "boot" at the end of the Win2k stanza, but when I type
> "boot" at the grub prompt, it tells me that the kernel needs to load
> before booting (huh?).

I don't think you want "boot" at the end of Win2K because, despite
the appearance, GRUB does not really boot windows.  It doesn't know
anything about starting up the Windows kernel, so it just delegates this
responsibility the windows boot loader which is (in your example) on
the boot sector of (hd1,0).  The Windows boot loader then takes care of
figuring out what/where the Windows kernel is, how to launch it, what
filesystems to use, and other stuff like that.  In your Linux stanzas,
Grub will actually execute the kernel and pass it all the parameters it
needs to start up.

> Also, I understand how Grub addresses drives and partitions.  What
> exactly does it mean when you have a letter at the end of a drive /
> partition like (hd0,0,a)?  The docs call "a" a "slice".  Never heard of
> a slice in this context before.

I believe this is a scheme used by BSD (and maybe other OS's?) to
make sub-partitions inside of the top-level partitions.  I don't
know the details, but you shouldn't need to worry about it on a pure
Linux/Windows system.


Matt

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