A while back, I stumbled across a web page or blog entry that explained how to safely use grub2 with it installed in a partition instead of a device (e.g. grub is installed in /dev/sda10 instead of /dev/sda).
IIRC, it involved locking a couple key files in the /boot/grub directory so that they can't be moved or modified. This is required because the grub code installed in the boot sector of the partition uses a raw block list to find those key files (grub doesn't actually understand the filesystem at that point). I thought I had saved that info, but now I need it I can't find it — and Google is unable to find the page again (perhaps it's gone). Does this ring a bell with anybody? -- Grant