Grub config file editing
Jeff Vian
jvian10 at charter.net
Thu Feb 16 17:32:50 UTC 2006
On Thu, 2006-02-16 at 22:07 +0800, John Summerfied wrote:
> 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.
>
It does not "remember" your previous selection. It does *always* boot
the kernel marked as default unless you make some other selection from
the menu.
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