GRUB installation thoughts

[Gordon Matzigkeit <gord@trick.fig.org>]

Hi!

I've been thinking about GRUB and how to make installation easier.
Here is my plan of how Debian GNU/Hurd installation should work:

1) Boot from floppy or CD or whatever, and GRUB starts.  You get
   a menu like this:

   Install Debian GNU/Hurd
   Boot an installed Debian GNU/Hurd system
   Install GRUB

2) Go through a typical Debian installation.  The install process will
   ask you to mark your partition(s) as type 63 (currently reserved
   for the GNU Hurd, for some odd reason... I wonder how that
   happened?).

3) When the base set is installed, the system reboots from the floppy
   again.  At that point, all the other menu options should work.

I'd like to implement a GRUB feature so that `(hd:0x63)' means `the
first hard disk partition that is of type 0x63'.

So, the floppy's menu.lst can look something like this:

title  = Install Debian GNU/Hurd
root   = (fd0)
kernel = /boot/gnumach.gz

title  = Boot an installed Debian GNU/Hurd system
root   = (hd:0x63)
kernel = /boot/gnumach.gz

title  = Install GRUB in the Debian GNU/Hurd root partition
root   = (hd:0x63)
install= (fd0)+1 (hd:0x63) (hd:0x63)/boot/grub/fs_stage1_5 0x2000 p

The last bit of magic is to make sure gnumach uses the Multiboot
`boot_device' parameter as its default root, so that we don't need to
specify a root= option to Mach.

Comments?

-- 
 Gordon Matzigkeit <gord@fig.org> //\ I'm a FIG (http://www.fig.org/)
    Lovers of freedom, unite!     \// I use GNU (http://www.gnu.org/)
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