I am running Fedora 7 on an external USB disk. As my old laptop didn't boot out of an USB port, I didn't install Grub, and tanks to the help of John Austin I was able to create a boot CD, by using this script: #!/bin/bash #create_grub_cd #Create an enpty file floppy sized dd if=/dev/zero of=fd_file bs=512 count=2880 #Write an MSDOS file system to the file mkfs -t msdos fd_file #Mount the file as a loopback device (/dev/loop0 by default) mount -o loop fd_file /mnt/zip #Create the directory structure for grub mkdir /mnt/zip/boot mkdir /mnt/zip/boot/grub #Copy the essential grub files cp /usr/share/grub/i386-redhat/* /mnt/zip/boot/grub #Create a prototype grub.conf file cat > /mnt/zip/boot/grub/grub.conf<<END_OF_CONF timeout=10 default=0 title FC7 2.6.22.5-76.fc7 14/9/2007 kernel (hd1,0)/vmlinuz-2.6.22.5-76.fc7 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 initrd (hd1,0)/initrd-2.6.22.5-76.fc7.img title FC7 2.6.22.1-65.fc7 27/8/2007 kernel (hd1,0)/vmlinuz-2.6.22.4-65.fc7 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 initrd (hd1,0)/initrd-2.6.22.4-65.fc7.img title FC7 2.6.22.1-27.fc7 21/7/2007 kernel (hd1,0)/vmlinuz-2.6.22.1-27.fc7 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 initrd (hd1,0)/initrd-2.6.22.1-27.fc7.img #title Windows # rootnoverify (hdx,y) # chainloader +1 END_OF_CONF #Check if /dev/fd0 exists, mv it if it does x=0 if (ls -l /dev/fd0);then mv /dev/fd0 /dev/fd0_orig; x=1;fi #Link /dev/fd0 to /dev/loop1 to fool grub !! ln -s /dev/loop0 /dev/fd0 #Run grub in batch mode /sbin/grub --batch <<EOF root (fd0) setup (fd0) quit EOF #restore fd0 if required rm -f /dev/fd0 if([ $x -eq 1 ]);then mv /dev/fd0_orig /dev/fd0;fi umount /mnt/zip ###################################################### #Now make a bootable CD ISO image # Make a dummy directory in /tmp mkdir /tmp/dummy #Copy the floppy image file to /tmp/dummy cp fd_file /tmp/dummy # Create the ISO image grub_image.iso mkisofs -b fd_file -o /tmp/grub_image.iso /tmp/dummy rm -rf /tmp/dummy ###################################################### #cdrecord -scanbus #cdrecord dev=ATAPI:1,0,0 speed=8 /tmp/grub_image.iso ###################################################### Of course each time that a kernel is updated I have to change the script, run again and burn a new CD. Now I want to install Grub on my USB disk so I can boot Linux when external disk is connected, otherwise Windows will start. What is the correct procedure, taking in account that I am not a super-expert and that my Fedora DVD is not here?? any graphical tool (I remember such a tool in previous Fedora releses)??? -- Antonio Montagnani Skype : antoniomontag
