Grub2 mapping drives

[saikee]

trilarian,

Sorry to hear your disappointment with Grub2.

Grub2 has Grub rescue which in my opinion is rather useless. The true Grub2 prompt however is very similar to the Grub1 prompt and it is the one that you press the "c" key before booting up a system.

The "help" command is there same as Grub1. Grub2 does have "ls" in place of "geometry" and it works like Linux kernel's "ls". The new ls command can list any directory including those from a NTFS partition. Thus Grub2 can be installed inside a MS Windows. The tab to auto complete is there too so use Grub2 prompt and disregard Grub rescue which is triggered if the second stage is broken.

There are only small changes between the two Grub which I got in my Ubuntu. The Grub1 booting instructions from menu.lst is listed here

title	Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic
uuid	e64d0e8b-63f1-4e79-917d-06a809eba07e
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=e64d0e8b-63f1-4e79-917d-06a809eba07e ro quiet splash 
initrd	/boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic

and the Grub2 translation in grub.cfg, after using Ubuntu package manager installing Grub2 gave

menuentry "Ubuntu, linux 2.6.28-11-generic" {
set root=(hd0,6)
search --fs-uuid --set e64d0e8b-63f1-4e79-917d-06a809eba07e
linux  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=e64d0e8b-63f1-4e79-917d-06a809eba07e ro  quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic
}

I highlighted the difference in red.

Thus the differences are very small. Also I don't normally bother with uuid reference and have booted the system "manually" in Grub1 with commands

root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=/dev/sda6 ro  
initrd	/boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic
boot

and if I use Grub2 it is just

set root=(hd0,6)
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=/dev/sda6 ro  
initrd	/boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic
boot

The green bits are by tab auto complete.

The three useful features in Grub2 (not found in Grub1) are

(1) Grub2 can read ntfs partition and so it can be installed as a stand alone system inside a MS Windows. I have tried this with Xp and Win7.

(2) Grub2 is factory-ready for gpt partitions so it can work seamlessly with hard disks in excess of 2TB size.

(3) Grub1 will complain if the partition to be booted is beyond the 1.3TB position in a hard disk with a error complaining "the number of cylinders exceed the maximum supported by the Bios". Grub2 has overcome this limitation.

The important point to note is both Grub can boot each other by "chainloader +1" command if the Grub has been installed/replicated inside the partition containing the /boot directory.