Just booting tips

[saikee]

OK I got your message.

I think the easiest way out is to boot up Xubuntu CD as the recent version can work as a Live CD.

You can find all the files needed by Grub in a ..../grub subdirectory in the filing system of the boot-up Xubuntu. It should be in a directory of

/usr/lib/grub/i386-pc

Inside you will find all the necessary Grub files like stage1, stage2 stage1.5 , etc . Just copy the content of this directory into the Xubuntu hard disk partition hda3 you are installing. Put it in as /boot/grub of this partition which you use to mount Xubuntu's "/".

Once you done that fire up a Grub shell in the boot-up Xubuntu (I mean the CD version, as the hard disk version isn't bootable yet) and ask Grub to install itself there by the command you have used before, that is

root (hd0,2)
setup (hd0)

Grub will work this time as the files needed are available.

Up to this point your Grub only boots to a Grub prompt, same saituation as using a bootable Grub disk. However as you can boot Xubuntu up manually the commands are in fact "the" same commands you need if you have to create a menu.lst inside /boot/grub directory.

Your menu.lst therefore should have for booting Xubuntu something like

title Xubuntu in hda3
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz........
initrd /boot/initrd....................

The difference between manual booting and automatically from the hard disk is in the former you omit the "title" statement (marked red above) and you need to add the "boot" statement as the green light for Grub to proceed.

I trust you have no problem of adding a "default" statement to allow the user to boot to Win9x, by putting these lines infront of the Xubuntu lines in menu.lst

color black/green yellow/cyan
default 0
timeout 10

title I am Win98, press the "enter" key boot me please!
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Don't think the "makeactive" statement is needed here because no one is going to make it inactive but there is no harm to have it. I have added the color statement so that you can vary whatever the color scheme to please your mom.