Re: GRUB FAQ

[Michal Suchanek]

On 30 January 2010 06:15, Bruce Dubbs <address@hidden> wrote:
> I'm working on updating the GRUB FAQ.  So far I've got the following
> questions.  Does anyone have any corrections or additional questions?

Ones that are missing would be:

* Do I have to install grub on my hardrive?

Because it should be noted that with some bootloaders it is not quite
easy or even possible at all to load the OS from a disk/partition
different from the one where the loader is installed but GRUB can
easily run form a rescue CD or an USB stick (or perhaps PXE - can it
already?). This is something that may not be obvious to people coming
from such simplistic bootloaders and it is one of the major advantages
of GRUB.

This brings the networking issues:

* Can grub be loaded over the network (such as over PXE) ?

  It most likely can as there is a kernel for pxelinux for loading any
floppy image and emulating a floppy so it should work like this at the
very least.

* Can grub load the system from the network?

I think it is somewhat possible with some additional PXE module not
part of grub mainline but I have never tried for myself.

These questions seem to be somewhat x86-pc-centric.

The ones concerning support for different platforms would be:

* What platforms does grub support?


* How do I install/run grub on my computer?

This is non-obvious. Installing on different platforms varies wildly.

For example, Apple's EFI is somewhat supported as it somewhat conforms
to the EFI standard but I could not get a conclusive answer how to run
grub on Apple x86 hardware. When I find a way that works on one
computer it would fail on another.


Thanks

Michal