Grub config file editing

[John Summerfied]

Jeff Vian wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-02-16 at 15:26 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> 
>>I am trying to fix the grub config file so that I can boot another OS
>>on this machine. I need to play with the (1,3) part- but it is a pain
>>to boot the system just to change this one file and then to power down
>>again to test it. Is there not a simple text editor in Grub?
>>
>>Dotan Cohen
>>http://technology-sleuth.com/long_answer/what_is_hdtv.html
>>
>>2
>>
> 
> 
> Certainly you can do command line editing with grub during boot ( the
> 'e' key ).
> However, those edits are only in memory and only during that boot.  Grub
> cannot write to a filesystem that is not even mounted yet.
"mounted" has no meaning to grub, and any event it's able to read it at 
that time: tab-completion for filenames works.

However, it does not write[1] to those filesystems, and I think that 
fairly sensible.

> 
> To make changes permanent you need to actually edit the text file
> grub.conf and save those changes when the system is running.

Use the commandline to find what works, write it down if you need and ..
> 
> Also, How are you going to test your saved changes if you do not reboot
> and let grub read and use the changed configuration?  
> 
you won't have to make so many corrections that rebooting becomes so 
frustrating.



[1] grub does write something to disk somewhere, it's able to "remember" 
what your previous selection was, and it's able to mark a partition 
active (for the DOS family of operating systems). However, what to write 
is determined by grub, not a potentially ignorant or malicious user.



-- 

Cheers
John

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