[lug] boot loader mystery

Hugh Brown hugh at math.byu.edu
Mon Jan 29 14:52:58 MST 2007


> So that's the second part that still needs
> clarification.  The bootloader (grub or lilo) itself
> needs to know where on the disk the kernel(s) and or
> initrd live.  That would seem to be location specific
> as well and require a bios installed call to access
> that since the driver isn't loaded yet.
>
> So disk locations would seem to be necessary.
> I think that might be what that map file is for in
> lilo?  And that's probably why you need to rerun lilo
> every time you make a change to it.  But I'm wondering
> how grub knows the physical location of /boot?
>
> thanks for the input
>
>

Here are the contents of /boot/grub on a rh4 box

device.map     grub.conf         minix_stage1_5     stage2
e2fs_stage1_5  iso9660_stage1_5  reiserfs_stage1_5  ufs2_stage1_5
fat_stage1_5   jfs_stage1_5      splash.xpm.gz      vstafs_stage1_5
ffs_stage1_5   menu.lst          stage1             xfs_stage1_5


So it has a device map and a stage1 bootstrapper as well as filesystem
specific stage1.5 bootstrappers.

I'm guessing it knows where the stage1 and the menu.lst are and uses those
to get to the next level.

Hugh



More information about the LUG mailing list