GRUB Boot loader

[rumrugby]

hi there,

can anyone help me with the grub boot loader? i am currently just booting linux 9 from a floppy but i am a little worried that the disk will wear out soon and then i will no longer be able to boot the system. I have no idea what commands i may need to boot it :( .

Thanks!

[toml]

When you say Linux 9 do you mean RedHat 9? Linux is current only at 2.6.x. Assuming you mean RedHat 9, you should be able to install grub by invoking the command
/sbin/grub-install /dev/[hs]daX
where your first partition on your first IDE drive would be hda1 and the first partion on your first SCSI drive would be sda1. To install on the MBR just use sda or hda without a partition number.

This also assumes you already have the grub rpms installed. Prior to executing the command, you also want to make sure your /boot/grub/menu.lst is set with the correct values for booting, or it may not install correctly.

I highly suggest you do a little searching for grub-install and make sure you know what you are doing, or you can really screw yourself up.

[jlasman]

We still prefer LILO for remotely installed webservers; we find grub a bit too overkill for our liking.

That said, we used a floppy disk to boot our first webserver (early Slackware, linux kernel v0.99) as we could never get LILO to run on it.

It ran about three years, and the floppy didn't wear out, but I don't think it rebooted more than maybe 20 or 30 times in those three years; generally you don't reboot a webserver that often.

Jeff

[toml]

I like lilo, it is quick and efficient, but the flexability of grub is why I use it. I can always keep at least one kernel around that Is known to work, and you don't have to remember to rerun lilo after each kernel update (not that it happens all that much).

Plus it has some nice features, like boot the next kernel in line if the current one panics.

[rumrugby]

Hi,

Thanks to everyone who replied, i do have redhat 9 by the way. I think i might stick to using a floppy to boot the webserver. But does anyone know how to duplicate the boot floppy disk so that i would have a spare copy?

Thanks