Re: [gentoo-user] Re: grub chainloader

[Stroller <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>]

On 18 Jul 2007, at 16:00, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>> ...
>> I don't know. I think the overview is pretty clear <http://
>> www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Overview>, and leads into
>> the remainder of the documentation quite well.
>
> ... The big stumbling block is getting people to grasp that grub
> is not an OS, it's not a linux app as linux is not in memory yet. And
> yet, it can still read files and dirs that linux put there, and it's
> config file read at run time is a linux file.

Um... surely the config file (um... grub.conf, right?) is _just_ a file.

It's not a Linux file, it's not a GRUB file, it's just a text file,  
which can be edited by any operating system that can write to the  
partition.

I have in the past considered putting grub.conf on a FAT32 partition  
- I'm not 101% sure that'd work but I've never tried because I never  
actually saw the usefulness.

> It's enough to make the
> average person's head spin (and does) - it can easily take two hours
> for me to get a class full of reasonably bright Windows techies to
> grasp ...

You clearly have more experience than I do with teaching novices  
about Linux.

You might ask them to consider - as a teaching aid - the Windows XP  
boot.ini file (I believe this is retired in Vista).

Boot.ini can be edited in Windows' Notepad in much the same way  
grub.conf can be edited with vi or nano. Very few Windows users will  
have any experience of doing more than removing an extra line (where  
the system was dual-booting to a previous installation of Millennium  
Edition, for instance) or reducing the countdown time before  
automatically booting the default entry, but if your students are  
bright then they will be aware of the boot.ini and will have done  
that much.

Stroller.
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