Re: What can GRUB do at the moment?

[marco grigull]

On Thu, Feb 01, 2001 at 06:32:20PM +0000, Yuriy Romanenko wrote:
> Sorry to bother you people, and you have every right
> in the world to just send me to the CVS to get the changelog
> and read it. But I thought it would be simpler for me
> just to ask.(Please RTFM me with a pointer to a resource
> if you feel these questions are not appropriate for this list)
> 
> 1) Does GRUB currently support booting from any kind CD-ROM?
>    ISO? Joliet? Is there a plan to implement that if no?
>    If yes, than how is the boot disc reported to the kernel?
>    (AFAIK BIOS has no numbering for CDROMS like 0x80,0x81)

no/not yet.
someone at bluepoint linux extended gnu grub to include cdrom, ntfs and befs
drivers.  you can get the source at 
ftp://duff.kuicr.kyoto-u.ac.jp/private/grub-0.5.94-2BP.src.rpm 
 but YMMV.  I didnt get it working w/ cdrom.

SmartBootManager supports booting off any available el torito boot images, 
 apparantly even off older soundblaster ide channels.

Someone hacked sbm to load as a 'kernel' from grub.


> 2) Does it provide a valid memory map for the multiboot kernel?
>    (as specified in the multiboot specifications) If yes, what
>    are the restrictions on that. If no, then is there a plan to
>    implement that.
> 3) How is the unusual boot media handled from the multiboot point
>    of view? Are SCSI and IOMEGA drives supported? If yes, then how
>    is it reported to the kernel? (BIOS Drive number doesn't exist)
> 4) Is HPFS supported? Is there plans on NTFS support??? 

see 1

5) considering bluepoints grub is built ontop of gnu grub, therefore
   automatically gnu software, which can be reintegrated.  We can at least
   add befs and ntfs drivers back in.

Marco