Ok heres my situation: I installed linuxmint on an external hard drive but i didnt install grub or any bootloader on the hard drive because i wanted to put grub on a floppy because i didnt want a grub menu to popup everytime someone in my family boots the pc (they prefer XP). So i followed a tutorial http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Boot_floppy

to create a GRUB floppy but i don't understand the part it says to create a grub.conf file. it wont allow me to create a file on the floppy.

Can someone help me?

EDIT: i succeeded in the process of creating a menu.lst file on my floppy

What do you mean it won't allow you? Do you get a permission denied? Are you root? Have you tried "touch /mnt/xxxx/grub.conf" then open the grub.conf file? Or you could create the grub.conf file somewhere else and copy it to the floppy after.

I just discovered how to copy to the floppy. just don't know what is the difference between grub.conf and menu.lst and how to configure them.

edit: I dont know how to edit them as well.

Try the floppy image at:

http://64.124.13.3/USB_Boot_using_GR...mozTocId154514

You can install grub on your hard drive and tell it not to bring up the menu at boot.

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...tml#hiddenmenu

The first link has a broken download link and i am so close to succeeding, i wont start over. I dont like the other alternative.

I just want to know how to edit the two files and i am curious about the grub.conf file.

Use either name. Grub looks for either depending on the system. Type grub --help to see what yours wants. To edit a file from the command line use vim, nano, joe, etc. You can use gedit/kate, etc. from the GUI, but you need to be root to write the file in its final position and it is not advisable to be root on the GUI because it is less secure. The GRUB bootloader reads the configuration from this file in order to know what to do. It is a simple text file.