grub core size

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Hi,

I am using grub 2.
The stage 1 bit of grub, that stores itself in the partition table and
the following sectors, seems to be quite large.
I have a HP server system that only has 32 512-bytes sectors free
before the first partition but the grub core does not fit in there. It
seems to need more like 64 512-byte sectors.

Why does grub need so much space on that part of the hard disk ?
My /boot/grub has been installed on an ext2 partition.

How difficult would it be to fit the stage 1 into 16384 bytes?
USB sticks sometimes have similar problems.

How about two versions of the grub core, one that requires the rest of
grub to be on an ext2/3 partition, and a larger one that can handle
other options, e.g. lvm etc.
Obviously, it is only worth trying that if the ext2 one can get into
16384 bytes or 32 sectors.

Kind Regards

James