From: Andrew Clausen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Advice for GRUB + GNU Parted users
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 09:05:26 +1100
> GNU Parted is a program for creating/copying/resizing/etc.
> partitions. Could you please give us some advice on
> what users should do (if anything) if they are using GRUB,
> and modify their partitions (and partition table) with
> Parted?
First, I'd like to explain some technical information about
GRUB. GRUB consists of three parts (or called "stage"). The first one
is called "stage1" and can be embedded in the boot sector of a FDD, a
HDD, or a partition. The stage1 is the bootstrap program but it just
loads "stage2" (or "stage1.5") and simply tranfers control to it. The
stage2 is the main program of GRUB. It is somewhat large so normally
we place it in a filesystem. On the other hand, the stage1.5 was
created to load the stage2 dynamically from a filesystem. This is
useful because stage1 doesn't understand any filesystem so it uses
"blocklist" notation to identify the location of the stage2. That
means you cannot move the stage2 once you install GRUB into your disk,
but you may do if you use the stage1.5 and embed it in the empty
blocks after a MBR or the boot loader area in a FFS partition. It is
arbitrary if you use the stage1.5 or not.
Therefore, it is not trivial to explain what is necessary. If they
use GRUB with the stage1.5, they might need to do nothing. If they
doesn't modify the partition where their stage2 is installed, perhaps
GRUB could still works fine. Otherwise they will have to reinstall
GRUB after making use of Parted.
If you have more questions, feel free to send them to this list.
Best wishes,
Okuji
----------------------------------------------------------------------
OKUJI Yoshinori <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ^o-o^
http://duff.kuicr.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~okuji (in English) m /
