Making a 'first grub' partition

[Goh Lip]

I wrote (at the ubuntu.users list).....

> Yo, NoOb; thanks for the vote of confidence. I am not at the level of
> competence to write a gui app. But I could write how to go about making
> a 'first grub' partition. Last I wrote was some time back in the kubuntu
> list and that was using grub-legacy. Using grub2 is far far easier to
> set up and maintain too.
>
> If it is okay, I like to start a new thread and cross-mail to the
> kubuntu list; that's where I've learnt a lot, and a great bunch of
> people too, humourous, fun, gives and takes a lot of good natured
> ribbing. Okay, better stop now, else they'll send me a picture of a
> silly cute bunny.
>


Before we start,
I don't think this 'first grub' is necessary for a system with one 
stable linux distro and one windows system.

Make a grub rescue cd (if you haven't already, shame on you)
grub-mkrescue grub2.iso                  (for karmic and earlier)
grub-mkrescue --output=grub2.iso         (for lucid)


Premise
The following 3 methods will boot all OS's in the system
  [1]
configfile (hd0,x)/boot/grub/grub.cfg

  [2]
linux (hd0,x)/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdax
initrd (hd0,x)/initrd.img
boot

  [3]
set root=(hd0,x)
chainloader +1
boot

[1] will boot all working grub.cfg OS's
[2] will boot all working linux system (may have faulty menu.lst or 
grub.cfg)
[3] will practically boot all working OS - windows, grub-legacy, grub2

The point is then to have these entries at the first grub partition.

To start,
Create a small partition of 120 - 150 Mb in either ext3 of ext2. (I used 
ext2). I've labelled this Booto, so it's /media/Booto.
Note it's not necessary to mount this at fstab at any OS.
When you're at a nice working, latest grub2 OS, mount /media/Booto, open 
up a terminal and type
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/Booto /dev/sda

Create a new grub.cfg, you can use the current OS grub.cfg as template, 
modify and copy to /media/Booto/boot/grub/
Done.

Modifying the grub.cfg at /media/Booto/grub/........
......in next message.




Regards - Goh Lip