Hello Ronald,
Yes, there might be a MiB, but do you really want to edit your blocks handy to
change the configuration of your bootloader?
Furthermore there are various modules for grub which can be loaded after grub
is already in memory.
Afaik there has to be a such fs.
If you would like to copy your partitions you could do two different things or
combinate them:
chainloading (there are tons of threads in different forums)
fs-search
For chainloading you need other bootloader (can be grub too) in every partition
you would like to boot an os from. With this you can just tell grub to load
"the next" bootloader from this partition. You can specify offset and length.
Example:
#chainload
menuentry "chainload freebsd" {
root=(hd0, msdos2)
chainload (root)+1
}
See my last mail for a syntax-hint for directly loading a kernel.
With search you can get your (hdX, msdosY) placeholder according to some
parameters. E.g. fs-UUID or label.
If you copy a partition and keep the label this could help.
Afaik there is no built-in feature to display all partitions you could boot
from. And how should grub choose these? You can load every piece of code into
ram, if it is boot code or not.
The syntax of grub.cfg is bash-like and you could script this easily, according
to your needs.
Regards,
sashab
On May 13, 2014 2:15:53 AM CEST, "Ronald F. Guilmette" <[email protected]>
wrote:
>
>In message
><CAHh2SOR-1OQOQrTLbQzGexO9bjbJ-jeOxq=isglp68g1xyj...@mail.gmail.com>
>Jordan Uggla <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 2:50 PM, Ronald F. Guilmette
>>> Must I first find a whole 'nother drive, install some flavor of
>Linux on
>>> that other drive, boot that other drive, and then use Linux to
>install
>>> Grub2?
>>
>>Definitely not needed.
>
>But I gather from your other comments that I *must* have installed on
>the drive... at the very least... *some* operating system which is
>using
>*some* type of filesystem which grub2 understands, *and* into which
>some
>little bits of pieces of stuff relating to grub2 must get installed.
>
>Is that correct?
>
>If so, then please educate me. Why is this even necessary? Doesn't a
>boot loader such a grub/grub2 have a whole entire track0 (63 * 512 byte
>sectors) to play with, at a very minimum? Why does it need to store
>*anything* into *my* filesystems? (I say "at a very minimum" because
>it appears to me that most modern partitioning tools... including but
>not limited to Gparted, FreeBSD's gpart, and even the Windows7 built-in
>partitioning tools... all seem to try hard to cater to the unique
>foibles associated with modern SSD drives by placing partitions, by
>default, after the first 1 MiB of the drive. Obviously, a lot could
>be done, software-wise, given nearly a whole megabyte to work with.)
>
>>...
>>You do however need a /boot/,
>>so you'll need to decide which partition should contain grub's
>>/boot/grub/, mount that partition somewhere, and pass the path to the
>>/boot/ directory on this partition to grub-install's --boot-directory
>>option and create an appropriate grub.cfg in.
>
>This is the part I'm still confused about. Why? Why does grub2 find
>it
>necessary to obtain anything at all from some particular place in one
>of
>*my* partitions?
>
>This is a concern for me, because I copy partitions around a lot. I'll
>have
>a "known good" OS installation on one drive, and then use either
>Gparted or
>Clonezilla to copy that to a different "woking copy" drive. If that
>get's
>hosed, e.g. by a virus or by fumble fingers... like, you know, the
>proverbial "rm -fr *"... then no worries. I just go back and re-copy
>the
>partition again from the "master" drive. But if my master doesn't
>already
>have this "grub.cfg" already all setup, installed into the Right Place,
>and configured properly for my *target* drive, then it appears that you
>are telling me that my simple partition copies won't work anymore... or
>at least grub2 won't be able to boot them. Correct?
>
>Also, and perhaps more to the point, I have used various other
>"unaffiliated"
>boot managers in the past (i.e. ones not specifically affiliated with
>one
>specific operating system) and also FreeBSD's boot manager and none of
>them
>seem to have any need or desire to have critical components of
>themselves
>embedded into any of my partitions. All of them seem perfectly happy
>to
>live just within track 0, including any & all of their associated
>config
>data.
>
>So there it is. I have tried to be clear about the various specific
>points of my ignorance. Now, if you be so kind, please enlighten me.
>
>
>Regards,
>rfg
>
>
>P.S. Is NTFS one of the supported file system types, you know, with
>respect to the --boot-directory option? How about FreeBSD UFS? (I'm
>guessing that both must be, but I'd just like to get solid
>confirmation.)
>
>P.P.S. In the context of your comments, what exactly is an
>"appropriate"
>grub.cfg file? Having never worked with grub before... or at least not
>consciously... I have no idea what needs to be in there.
>
>The other alternative boot managers I've worked with in the past just
>automagically came up showing me a list of possible partitions I might
>be able to boot from and then asking me to select one. No special
>pre-configuration needed. Does grub have a mode like this?
>
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