Re: [PATCH] Improve documentation of BIOS installation

[Barry Jackson <zen25000@zen.co.uk>]

On 30/03/11 20:52, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 08:00:46PM +0100, Barry Jackson wrote:
>> On 29/03/11 13:40, Colin Watson wrote:
>>> With http://grub.enbug.org/BIOS_Boot_Partition being down at the moment,
>>> I went to look at what corresponding documentation there was in the
>>> manual.........
>>
>> One question that I cannot find an answer for in the manual here :-
>> 18.1 GRUB only offers a rescue shell
>> It explains that the only available commands are ls, set, unset and insmod.
>> So what use is it?
>> Assuming that a module is missing or a variable is incorrect, and
>> these are corrected with insmod and set - what next?
>> I can see no way to boot after correcting things without a 'boot'
>> command available. If you can't boot, why bother with set or insmod.
>> I just don't get it!
>
> The manual even answers this question directly with an example:
>
>    http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#GRUB-only-offers-a-rescue-shell
>
> See the example after "then you can correct this and enter normal mode
> manually".
>
> (Once you are in normal mode with a correct prefix, then commands will
> be autoloaded, although you could insmod them manually if you really
> wanted.  But this should be self-explanatory once you do it, as entering
> normal mode will give you a GRUB menu.)
>
> I've extended the text you refer to
> (http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Commands) to link to
> this troubleshooting section.  It'll be there the next time we push to
> the website.
>
> Regards,
>

Thanks Colin,
I was being a bit dim - or maybe it was late.
I had not grasped the concept of the 'normal' command which was not 
included in the list of available commands.

It's much clearer now.

Maybe next time I'm hit with a rescue shell I may just be able to boot 
from it ;-)

Barry