HD Install :: Changing Grub settings



In searching the forum i find things like this...
Quote
Alternativly you can boot into root and open
/boot/grub/menu.1st in beaver and edit it directly.
Be careful what you change though.

THe problem is I don't know how to "boot into root"
I figured out how to edit files in VI but if i can't get to it i can't change it.

Edit..
I got it working and it was easy as pie.
BOot up dsl from hard drive
from the desktop open midnight commander as superuser
edit the file using vi commands and save.

Never read that anywhere, but it seems to do the job
Thanks to all who posted.
for changing the text of /boot/grub/menu.lst ,

i opened it in that text editor that comes with the frugal install, Ted, right?

Edited the line, then saved it to the desktop.
Then opened Midnight Commander, as super user, opened on one panel the desktop, opened the /boot/grub on the other, did an f6 rename move to overwrite the menu.lst.
works like a charm, but does the frugal option prevent me booting Microsux Winblows?
, also actually using my SCSI drive, if I do wINE  + dos swap file, my dos swap partition and a really big linux swap partition are on that drive.

And just why is the default login password limited to only 8 characters?

What I am trying to accomplish is a full Debian install over the net on not one, not two but 4 puters, with all kinds of loopbacks, symmetric processing, shared processors a la Beowulf, SCSI on every machine and maybe write a script or two to enable shared swap partitions across the whole system.
I know, not really an ambitious project, but hey, a guy has to start somewhere right?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, will it harm much to take out the "frugal" command option in the grub menu?

I took out all the nodma, noscsi and all, it still boots but not the way I am used to. I have been running Fedora and some really old versions of SuSe for so long I just got used to their particular boot sequences.
Ted is a word processor, not a text editor.  It's probably not the best idea to use it to edit critical text files.  DSL has vi, nano, and beaver as text editors, which can all be run as root (sudo beaver /cdrom/boot/grub/menu.lst).  You're making extra work for yourself by editing a copy of the file.

I wondered about the 8-character limit too, but it is apparently not a true limit.  My root password has more than 8 characters and I have no trouble with it.

The "frugal" option has nothing to do with Windows...it is made to boot DSL with a writable KNOPPIX/boot partition. If it is removed, the boot partition (including the grub config) cannot be modified without manually remounting the partition, and you will be prompted to remove a nonexistant CD when you reboot. The up side is the boot partition is less likely to suffer any accidental corruption.
Quote (mikshaw @ Nov. 12 2006,09:12)
Ted is a word processor, not a text editor.  It's probably not the best idea to use it to edit critical text files.  DSL has vi, nano, and beaver as text editors, which can all be run as root (sudo beaver /cdrom/boot/grub/menu.lst).  You're making extra work for yourself by editing a copy of the file.

I wondered about the 8-character limit too, but it is apparently not a true limit.  My root password has more than 8 characters and I have no trouble with it.

The "frugal" option has nothing to do with Windows...it is made to boot DSL with a writable KNOPPIX/boot partition. If it is removed, the boot partition (including the grub config) cannot be modified without manually remounting the partition, and you will be prompted to remove a nonexistant CD when you reboot. The up side is the boot partition is less likely to suffer any accidental corruption.

Ok beaver... I was looking at the icons. They are somewhat similar.
And when I wrote something in Ted, at least the default installation thereof, it had no option for saving as plain text, only formatted text.
Still not getting my SCSI ....yet...

Have to work that one out because, as mentioned, all my machines have Adaptec controllers, one of them is primarily scuzzy.

original here.