Re: Succeed installing GRUB via disk editor

[Robert Siemer]

Re!

> I plan to make the same thing.

Did you got an USB drive?

> What hexeditor have you used? because of the size of the stage 1.5
> (7468 bytes), it's a lot! and by hand i don't want to make
> mistakes...

Hey, hey, I didn't copy it by hand... (-:  I'll make additions to my
step-by-step "guide".
(Note: my fat_stage1_5 from grub-0.90 is 7436 bytes, but that could
depend on the compiler...

> Can i send you my steps/image files to be sure i don't make mistakes
> about what bytes to write?

Depends on what I should check on these... (-:
But I'm open for any questions, of course.



> > My steps:
> >
> > -install grub on a spare disk

As I didn't include files first... Here they go:
sectors.bin: stage1 and fat_stage1_5 as read from the disk (15+1)*512
 (got it via "dd")
stage2: corresponding stage2

> >  -pay attention to 1) stage1.5 should be for FAT
> >                    2) stage1.5 should go to the place after the mbr
> >                    3) where did you left stage2?

If you make the images on your own system with grub(-shell or
-bootdisk) look what "setup" is doing. 1) can be seen directly, 2)
"embed" should be called with (hdX) and 3) look at the pararmeters of
the "install" invocation and compare with the documentation of grub.
Something with (hdX,X) and /xyz/zyx/stage2.

> > -stage1 is now configured to read stage1.5 from track0 (of by one
> >  sect.)
> > -stage1.5 does now know how to find stage2 (partition and path)
> >
> > -get the MBR of the target disk

I used gsect18.zip (http://www.inet.uni2.dk/~svolaf/utilities.htm). I
tried google to find something and got to a cool DOS-utils page...

> > -copy stage2 to the target disk (beware of the partition and path)

My target was C:\stage2 (but I copied it to thousand places to be
sure. :-)

> > -get the MBR+stage1.5 from the spare disk (put it into an image file)

As I said, I used "dd".

> > -now IMPLANT the partition table from the MBR of the target disk to
> >  the image we just made

Help from http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_tables.html
and http://www.datarescue.com/laboratory/partition.htm (not that
accurate).

I used two instances of "hexeditor". One to view the partition table
of the target (MBR from the target (512B), got with "getsect".) The
other to overwrite the partition table with in my
image (sectors.bin ("dd") 512B*16).

> > -copy the image to the beginning of the target disk

Used psect16.zip from the same site above. But it can only write files
of 512 byte. So i splitted my sectors.bin with "split", made some
renameing-things and generated a DOS batch file to call putsect 16
times (remember the CR/LF instead of NL in DOS).

> > -pray and reboot (-:

I didn't pray. [-:

> > What you need: a working network to the notebook (for file
> > transfer).

Do you have a working network to your C1?

> > And tools to read and write directly from/to the disk.

getsect and putsect...

> > A hexeditor on the helper machine is good. Some fdisk-alikes ar
> > good for verifications.

I called "sfdisk" sometimes on sector.bin and the MBR of the target
(i.e. C1 notebook) to see what it is thinking of it... (-:
"sfdisk" is quite powerful. Use some command line switches to satisfy
your needs.

> > I append my image file: it (i.e. stage1.5) will look for "/stage2"
> > on (hd0,0).

As I understand GRUB, it wont look into the "first partition", but
into the first slot (of four) of the partition table. So be sure to
have the partition stage2 is lying on in the first partition table
"slot".

Warning: As I don't know the internals of GRUB be sure to work on two
similar, modern machines with respect to the BIOS (INT13
extention...). If you don't do so, consider using the "--force-lba"
switch for the grub-shell command "install".


As I deleted "D:" on the notebook anyway, you could do so before
starting everything (makes checking and "copying" the partition table
easier).


Note to bug-grub@: no files send to the list

Regards,
                Robert