Changing Grub settingsForum: HD Install Topic: Changing Grub settings started by: Gargamed Posted by Gargamed on Nov. 07 2006,10:53
Hi everybody,I am dsl and Linux beginner. I need the "acpi=off" to run my frugal hard drive installation of dsl. I can edit the command line in the Grub interface when I start the system. But I cannot edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file because of "read only file". Even in the terminal, I use the command "sudo su", then "vi menu.lst" : I get a warning "read only file". It is the same with chmod, even if I am logged as Root. Posted by clivesay on Nov. 07 2006,13:23
You need to edit from the /boot folder on the root of the drive. If your frugal is on hda1 for example, your /mnt/hda1/boot/grub folder is where you will want to go. I think you can also access this from /mnt/cdrom but can't remember for sure. Chris Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Nov. 07 2006,14:39
That would be /cdrom - in a regular frugal installation, this would be already mounted as rw.
Posted by clivesay on Nov. 07 2006,15:00
You're right. Thanks, Hats! Posted by steve roffey on Nov. 10 2006,02:29
Hello I instlled DSL to my hard drive and need to make the same change. ALso the GRUB does not give me the choice for windows. I can get to the menu.1st file in dsl but cant edit it. The other post says that I need to edit it in the grub folder, which I can get to, but what do i need to do to edit it? How do i open it for editing once I am there? Thanks. Posted by mikshaw on Nov. 10 2006,04:05
DSL comes with three interactive editors: beaver, vi, and nano. You will need to edit as root, and the filesystem will need to be writable. If you have a traditional harddrive install, the filesystem should already be writable. If you are using frugal/poorman's the filesystem *might* be writable. If not, you may need to reboot and add "frugal" to the boot line for that session. To do this, wait until grub displays its menu, select the system you want to boot, press 'e' to edit, press 'e' again to edit the kernel line (which should be selected after pressing 'e' the first time), add "frugal" to the line, press 'Enter', press 'b' to boot with your change.Or I suppose you could manually remount the root filesystem read-write, but i've never done that to say it definitely works. Posted by steve roffey on Nov. 10 2006,05:01
I can edit the boot line aon startup, I can even start windows manually at the grub prompt. But the changes only last for that one time.I don't understand "You will need to edit as root". Does that mean when the screen says grub? I can only get into the editors from the desktop after dsl has started up. After the menu comes up there is "C" for command line, is this the root you speak of? Posted by Ramik on Nov. 10 2006,05:27
Easy, boot with a CD\Floppy, mount the drive and edit \mnt\hdwhatever\boot\grub\menu.lstGood luck ! P.S: Don't forget to always keep a separate working entry while changing the grub menu... Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Nov. 10 2006,15:15
If you have a default frugal installation, the bootloader will boot with "frugal" which makes /cdrom mounted as rw. If you don't, you can boot once with grub and edit it with 'e' to add it. Once back in DSL, edit /cdrom/boot/grub/menu.lst with superuser/root priveleges. You could make a backup as well. You can start a root terminal from the menu, or a regular terminal and use sudo ie
You can also mount hdXx again as rw as a 2nd instance... mount /dev/hdXx /mnt/hdXx and edit /mnt/hdXx/boot/grub/menu.lst - I remember doing this for some older versions of DSL, but it should still work. You could also boot with toram I suppose, or use a boot cd/floppy as ramik suggested (and those backward slashes ;p) Posted by steve roffey on Nov. 11 2006,01:30
Maybe I am asking the wrong question. I never saw anything in the install instructions about sudo.
I read that the file should be in /mnt/hda7/boot/grub menu.1st. Should I be in the /cdrom/ like it says above? I Installed dsl after booting from cd to hda7 It askes if I have windows installed on hda1, I say yes on reboot there is no windows option. I choose to edit the first option since I need to add acpi=off. Dsl boots, I can see menu.1st in the /mnt/hda7/boot/grub but is is read only. I reboot with the cd using frugal and tomem. I use aterminal from the desktop and when i get to the menu.1st it comes up as a blank file. There are very little instructions on the main faq for installing grub for dsl. Am I way off track here? I have never used linux and don't know the commands which seem to be common knowledge for some.Is there a step by step guide for this grub stuff or do Ii need to learn linux before i bother any further? Thanks Steve Posted by steve roffey on Nov. 11 2006,02:11
In searching the forum i find things like this...
THe problem is I don't know how to "boot into root" I figured out how to edit files in VI but if i can't get to it i can't change it. Edit.. I got it working and it was easy as pie. BOot up dsl from hard drive from the desktop open midnight commander as superuser edit the file using vi commands and save. Never read that anywhere, but it seems to do the job Thanks to all who posted. Posted by The_Prophet_Jonah on Nov. 12 2006,06:41
for changing the text of /boot/grub/menu.lst , i opened it in that text editor that comes with the frugal install, Ted, right? Edited the line, then saved it to the desktop. Then opened Midnight Commander, as super user, opened on one panel the desktop, opened the /boot/grub on the other, did an f6 rename move to overwrite the menu.lst. works like a charm, but does the frugal option prevent me booting Microsux Winblows? , also actually using my SCSI drive, if I do wINE + dos swap file, my dos swap partition and a really big linux swap partition are on that drive. And just why is the default login password limited to only 8 characters? What I am trying to accomplish is a full Debian install over the net on not one, not two but 4 puters, with all kinds of loopbacks, symmetric processing, shared processors a la Beowulf, SCSI on every machine and maybe write a script or two to enable shared swap partitions across the whole system. I know, not really an ambitious project, but hey, a guy has to start somewhere right? Meanwhile, back at the ranch, will it harm much to take out the "frugal" command option in the grub menu? I took out all the nodma, noscsi and all, it still boots but not the way I am used to. I have been running Fedora and some really old versions of SuSe for so long I just got used to their particular boot sequences. Posted by mikshaw on Nov. 12 2006,14:12
Ted is a word processor, not a text editor. It's probably not the best idea to use it to edit critical text files. DSL has vi, nano, and beaver as text editors, which can all be run as root (sudo beaver /cdrom/boot/grub/menu.lst). You're making extra work for yourself by editing a copy of the file.I wondered about the 8-character limit too, but it is apparently not a true limit. My root password has more than 8 characters and I have no trouble with it. The "frugal" option has nothing to do with Windows...it is made to boot DSL with a writable KNOPPIX/boot partition. If it is removed, the boot partition (including the grub config) cannot be modified without manually remounting the partition, and you will be prompted to remove a nonexistant CD when you reboot. The up side is the boot partition is less likely to suffer any accidental corruption. Posted by The_Prophet_Jonah on Nov. 12 2006,15:46
Ok beaver... I was looking at the icons. They are somewhat similar. And when I wrote something in Ted, at least the default installation thereof, it had no option for saving as plain text, only formatted text. Still not getting my SCSI ....yet... Have to work that one out because, as mentioned, all my machines have Adaptec controllers, one of them is primarily scuzzy. |