bjoernvold.com

I am asking this for a friend so info asked for may be slow to appear.

How do you get Grub2 to see and then boot from a floppy in a usb floppy drive?

They are using Kubuntu, apart from that I know little, I was asked the question on a break at work.

Oh, and he can't get it to see a USB memory stick either.

Grub2 sux Jkerr Rolf

Grub 2 - A guide for users

Grub 2 bootloader - A full tutorial

I have also sent some examples and explanations to Joste on another venue, but they were Grub 1. If anyone can send some on Grub 2, that would be great.

Sorry, but I've never used Grub2. The best place to look for answers may be the Ubuntu forum. Given the size of their user base, it's quite likely that a similar question may have been asked there.

Unless he's trying to boot from a USB stick, then I don't think the boot loader is relevant to the issue of recognising such devices.

Jim

Joste wrote:How do you get Grub2 to see and then boot from a floppy in a usb floppy drive?

Curious as to the boot order of the machine in BIOS? I wonder because this may give a clue. Thanks.

Also, remember how a floppy is named in /etc/fstab. This is how you'd want it to appear in menu.lst or in grub.conf, as.

In Arch, I have included in menu.lst:

So, the device to boot with would have to be changed to reflect a boot from floppy, as I understand it, to 0 being as /dev/fd0 (of course the rest of the boot line would need to go with that).
I'm not 100% on this, but I'm thinking in menu.lst, something like changing this to reflect 0 (the primary boot device) and /dev/fd0:

Then, fd0 itself would boot the usb stick from there. I think I'm off on this somehow though.

I do think your friend's BIOS needs to be set up accordingly to boot correctly, however.

Also, with all this being said, this is *normally* - of course, we're talking Grub 2 here, I'm talking Grub 1 again, and I'm not sure if there would be a "translation process" for it to understand what your friend is trying to do or not. I do not think this useless, however. It is my own assumption and assertion that one would need a good grasp of Grub1, in order to grasp Grub2. There are more things that are "automatic" with Grub2, this much I do know, and your friend may need to over-write some of that with Grub1 knowledge.

Of course, all this could be much simplified and much more stable if your friend would search out grub 0.97 for Kubuntu. lol. Viking and I both have seen Grub2 tork many a system. I've had it happen with Arch, when I tried upgrading to Grub2 in it. I ended up with a reinstall, because it took the heart of the OS itself away (why or how is not the point). It just would be better with 0.97 overall.

Edit: However, if your friend still insists that it must be Grub2, then there is a Grub2 guide for Kubuntu users at their forum.