9.6. GRUB Commands
GRUB allows a number of useful commands in its command line interface. Some of the commands accept options after their name; these options should be separated from the command and other options on that line by space characters.
The following is a list of useful commands:
boot
— Boots the operating system or chain loader that was last loaded.chainloader </path/to/file>
— Loads the specified file as a chain loader. If the file is located on the first sector of the specified partition, use the blocklist notation,+1
, instead of the file name.The following is an examplechainloader
command:chainloader +1
displaymem
— Displays the current use of memory, based on information from the BIOS. This is useful to determine how much RAM a system has prior to booting it.initrd </path/to/initrd>
— Enables users to specify an initial RAM disk to use when booting. Aninitrd
is necessary when the kernel needs certain modules in order to boot properly, such as when the root partition is formatted with the ext3 file system.The following is an exampleinitrd
command:initrd /initrd-2.6.8-1.523.img
install <stage-1> <install-disk> <stage-2>
— Installs GRUB to the system MBR.p
config-file<stage-1>
— Signifies a device, partition, and file where the first boot loader image can be found, such as(hd0,0)/grub/stage1
.<install-disk>
— Specifies the disk where the stage 1 boot loader should be installed, such as(hd0)
.<stage-2>
— Passes the stage 2 boot loader location to the stage 1 boot loader, such as(hd0,0)/grub/stage2
.p
<config-file>
— This option tells theinstall
command to look for the menu configuration file specified by<config-file>
, such as(hd0,0)/grub/grub.conf
.
Warning
Theinstall
command overwrites any information already located on the MBR.kernel </path/to/kernel> <option-1> <option-N>
... — Specifies the kernel file to load when booting the operating system. Replace </path/to/kernel> with an absolute path from the partition specified by the root command. Replace <option-1> with options for the Linux kernel, such asroot=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
to specify the device on which the root partition for the system is located. Multiple options can be passed to the kernel in a space separated list.The following is an examplekernel
command:kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.8-1.523 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
The option in the previous example specifies that the root file system for Linux is located on thehda5
partition.root (<device-type><device-number>,<partition>)
— Configures the root partition for GRUB, such as(hd0,0)
, and mounts the partition.The following is an exampleroot
command:root (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (<device-type><device-number>,<partition>)
— Configures the root partition for GRUB, just like theroot
command, but does not mount the partition.
Other commands are also available; type
help --all
for a full list of commands. For a description of all GRUB commands, refer to the documentation available online at http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/.