dear everybody :

May you kindly help me to solve a GRUB install trouble on CF card, please ...

I try to install GRUB into my CF card, and follow the commands :

fdisk /dev/sda
mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1
tune2fs -c 0 /dev/sda1
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /mnt
cd /mnt
mkdir -p boot/grub
cp /usr/lib/grub/* boot/grub
cp vmlinuz-xxx(my kernel image) boot/
cp ramdisk.gz(my ramdisk image) boot/
cp /boot/grub/menu.lst boot/grub (and modify the contents to load filesystem into ram0)
cp -dpR /dev .
grub
root (hd1,0)
setup (hd1,0)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd1,0)"... failed (this is not fatal)
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd1,0)"... failed (this is not fatal)
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 d (hd1,0) /grub/stage2 p /boot/grub/menu.lst "...succeeded
Done

But when I use this CF card to boot my board
I couldn't even seen the GRUB menu..... Just a cursor right on the left top corner.....

Did I miss any step or should I keep on concern on any other things ?

Best Regards, and have a nice day

You don't say which distro you are using but I had the same problem with Debian. No matter which method I used I could never get grub installed to a floppy. It always behaved as you have described. Eventually I found a very simple way - in my case with Debian it was grub-install /dev/fd0. That was it. I made an iso of the floppy and made a bootcd as well.

Dear TigerOC :

I am really thanks for your reply !
In fact, I haved try grub-install command already.
But the result come from grub-install is falied, either !
So I start to try the grub shell.
But ...... still get the same result .... /_\

Anyway...... I really thanks for your reply ^_^

I would suggest formating for ext2 not ext3 since you don't really need journal support for the device. The command grub-install in Debian writes the stage1 to the boot sector and this links to stage2 and then menu.lst on the hard drive.

Dear TigerOC :

I am really appreciate for your attention to my thread ^_^

In fact, I have tried both of ext2 and ext3.
By the way, I use GNU GRUB 0.95
I have tried to use every commands that I can see from the documents from internet:
grub-install or grub shell directly
But all in vain ..... :-(
even that I found some commands are wrong......
But I found that if I install a mini (about 350MB) Linux on a 512MB CF card by the SuSE CD
The GRUB will just install correctlly into the CF card and boot correctly !
But If I try to install GRUB into a smaller CF card (64 MB) that couldn't install the mini (about 350MB) Linux by SuSE CD manually, I just couldn't correctly install it.
I really don't finger out "WHY?"
Because I have study the manula document from the GNU, and follow the commands they post.
Why the CD can install GRUB correctly into CF card, but I couldn't ?
I really confused ..... :- (

Finally... Thanks for your reply again .... :-)

golien

I don't have such media myself so can not help but I was thinking out loud

Q1 Does this device become visilble to the bios on boot up?
Do you know if your motherboard manufacturer has a flash upgrade that will allow your media thru a pci slot become a bootable device?

Q2 This device bootable under windows?

the reason I asked is if its not an usb device, your bios may have some trouble recognising it as a bootable device until an operating system is up and running......and I gather you want it to be bootable and not just act as a storage device?

The previous info on ext2 ext3 is relevant as you have limited space so a journal system writes extra stuff to your device and eats up free space.

In Australia usb devices start around 40 aussie dollars