[lug] boot loader mystery

[Hugh Brown]

> 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