observation concerning GRUB

[Joel Sherrill]

Stephan Wilms wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> My attempts to get GRUB to work led to an interesting observation.
> First of I downloaded the file "grub144.gz" in:
>    ftp://ftp.oarcorp.com/pub/rtems/betas/rtems-4.5.0-beta/
>          contrib/pc386_grub_image/
> (I confirmed that it was a correct binary mode download)
> 
> Next I looked at the README file and (on my Linux prompt) entered the
> recommended line:
>    dd if=grub144.gz of=/dev/fd0
> 
> This did NOT work. The result was a floppy without a valid file system.

And was not expected to work.  The README is wrong.  It should be

gzcat grub144.gz | dd of=/dev/fd0    

OR

gunzip grub144.gz
dd if=grub144 of=/dev/fd0


> It did not boot and it did not show a directory when querried with
> "mdir a:".
> 
> Now we're getting to my observation (and final success): unpacking the
> archive first gave me the file "grub144", which had the exact size of
> one floppy, and writing that file like this:
>    dd if=grub144 of=/dev/fd0
> (note the missing ".gz") gave me a floppy that DID boot and that
> contained the valid expected files. In addition it executed the RTEMS
> progams successfully.
> 
> Interesting, isn't it ?
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> --
> Stephan Wilms (stephan.wilms at cwa.de)
> CWA-GmbH, Aachen, Germany

-- 
Joel Sherrill, Ph.D.             Director of Research & Development
joel at OARcorp.com                 On-Line Applications Research
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