Standards, Environments, and Macros                       grub(5)



NAME
     grub - GRand Unified Bootloader software on Solaris

DESCRIPTION
     The current release  of  the  Solaris  operating  system  is
     shipped  with  the GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) software.
     GRUB is developed and supported by the Free Software Founda-
     tion.


     The overview for the GRUB Manual, accessible at www.gnu.org,
     describes GRUB:


     Briefly, a boot loader is the first  software  program  that
     runs  when  a computer starts. It is responsible for loading
     and transferring  control  to  an  operating  system  kernel
     software  (such  as Linux or GNU Mach). The kernel, in turn,
     initializes the rest of the operating system (for example, a
     GNU [Ed. note: or Solaris] system).


     GNU GRUB is a very powerful boot loader that can load a wide
     variety  of free, as well as proprietary, operating systems,
     by means of chain-loading. GRUB is designed to  address  the
     complexity  of booting a personal computer; both the program
     and this manual are tightly bound to that computer platform,
     although  porting to other platforms may be addressed in the
     future. [Ed. note:  Sun  has  ported  GRUB  to  the  Solaris
     operating system.]


     One of the important features in GRUB is  flexibility;  GRUB
     understands  filesystems  and  kernel executable formats, so
     you can load an arbitrary operating system the way you like,
     without  recording  the  physical position of your kernel on
     the disk. Thus you can load the kernel  just  by  specifying
     its  file  name and the drive and partition where the kernel
     resides.


     Among Solaris machines, GRUB is supported on x86  platforms.
     The  GRUB  software  that  is  shipped with Solaris adds two
     utilities not present in the open-source distribution:

     bootadm(1M)        Enables you to manage  the  boot  archive
                        and make changes to the GRUB menu.


     installgrub(1M)    Loads the boot program from disk.





SunOS 5.11          Last change: 21 Apr 2005                    1






Standards, Environments, and Macros                       grub(5)



     Both of these utilities are described in Solaris man pages.


     Beyond  these  two  Solaris-specific  utilities,  the   GRUB
     software  is  described in the GRUB manual, a PDF version of
     which is available from the Sun web site.  Available in  the
     same location is the grub(8) open-source man page.  This man
     page describes the GRUB shell.

SEE ALSO
     boot(1M), bootadm(1M), installgrub(1M)


     Solaris Express Installation Guide: Basic Installations


     System Administration Guide: Basic Administration


     http:/www.gnu.org/software/grub



































SunOS 5.11          Last change: 21 Apr 2005                    2