Booting from a hard drive using grub

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3dbuddha · #1 Post by **3dbuddha** » Sat May 10, 2008 12:28 pm

I've got a small laptop that lacks a cd drive, and won't boot from an external cd or usb. It also has no floppy, and I don't own, and don't want an external floppy or cd, this laptop is great cause it's small. I've managed to get linux installers to correctly run off of a small ext3 partition which runs grub. I've got windows xp and ubuntu running.
UBCD has a great collection of diagnostic and general use tools that I'd like to incorporate in my /boot partition, but I'm having trouble booting to the menu from the hd.
Can anyone suggest what kernel and initrd image I should use to boot to the UB CD menu? I've tried to boot several items off of the cd with no luck.
Thanks
3D

#2 Post by **Icecube** » Sun May 11, 2008 12:00 pm

See viewtopic.php?t=1327

3dbuddha · #3 Post by **3dbuddha** » Mon May 12, 2008 2:25 am

Thanks. A couple q's:
Do the contents of the UBCD have to be the only thing on the partition, or can it be the contents of a directory?
I've never used syslinux, does it write it's own record to the MBR? or can I call it from grub?
Has anyone tried this from an ext3 partition, maybe using pxelinux?

What I'd really like to do is have the UBCD as the contents of a directory on an ext3 partition.

Thanks
K

#4 Post by **Icecube** » Mon May 12, 2008 1:31 pm

You can try to chainload extlinux from grub. The dosapplications won't probably work because dos can't read ext2/3. But all the programs which are booted using a kernel and an initrd will work.

You also can convert all the isolinux config files in a grub menu (/menu/*.cfg)
See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=759890 for an example.

3dbuddha · #5 Post by **3dbuddha** » Tue May 13, 2008 1:51 am

Thanks, this just may be what I was looking for. I appreciate your prompt replies. I will post again as soon as I'm able to implement these ideas and let you know how it works, and what I did.
K