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Author Topic: where is /boot  (Read 1801 times)

Offline ezee

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where is /boot
« on: June 29, 2010, 06:29:53 PM »
i installed TC per the instructions as a vm in vmware player.  works great...

where did all the stuff in /boot go that was made during the install?  I'm trying to customize my grub splash screen...can't find /boot anywhere

do I need to create a sep partition for /boot in order to access it from inside tc?

Offline limeblack

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Re: where is /boot
« Reply #1 on: June 29, 2010, 07:21:52 PM »
Using terminal or a file manager go to /mnt/

In there you hard drive should be listed   :)

For example on my computer I type the following commands into terminal

Quote
cd /mnt/

This makes the terminal travel to the mnt directory
mnt stands for mount.  Although it seems like this should be obvious it took me a while to figure this out.       :D
Then I list all avaliable devices in the mnt directory using this command.
Quote
ls -a
The Terminal typically spits back
hdc(cdrom)
hda1(my hard drive)
You then type in "cd <foldername>" to travel iinto the folder.
 :D So in my case I type in the following.
Quote
cd hda1
Then I type in this to list all of the follows on my hard drive
Quote
ls -a
I again get all the files and folders I can view
My terminal spits back
boot
tce

From their you can drob a .xpm splash image into /mnt/hda1/boot/grub
and edit the menu.lst with with vi

If your hard drives name is hda1 Here is one line that will travel to /mnt/hda1 and list all the folders and files in mnt/hda1/
Quote
cd /mnt/hda1/;ls -a

I hope that helps  ???  If not feel free to ask another question  ;D

Offline ezee

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Re: where is /boot
« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2010, 08:02:21 PM »
yep...there it is!

is that normal to put /boot inside /mnt like that, or is it a tc thing?

Offline maro

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Re: where is /boot
« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2010, 11:08:08 PM »
I'm afraid I felt the urge to add a few small points as clarification to the otherwise obviously helpful explanation provided by limeblack:

  • The '/mnt' directory contains the so called mount points. This is a convention found in many other Linux distributions, but IIRC not guaranteed to be used by all (e.g. another "popular choice" is '/media')
  • There can be more attached storage devices than currently mounted ones:
    • The '/etc/fstab' file contains entries for all recognised devices (and some more). To show just the identified storage devices one could use the grep '^/dev/' /etc/fstab command.
    • The '/etc/mtab' file contains the entries of all currently mounted devices. To show just the currently mounted storage devices one could use the grep ' /mnt/' /etc/mtab command.
    • The (raw) storage devices have "names" like '/dev/fd0' (for a floppy disk), '/dev/hdc' (for a IDE CD-ROM), '/dev/hda1' (for a partition on a P-ATA hard disk), '/dev/sr0' (for  a SATA CD-ROM), etc. When the devices are "recognised" (e.g. at boot time or during insertion of a USB stick) TC / MC will create the respective mount point directory in '/mnt' (via the '/usr/sbin/rebuildfstab' script). But it will not directly mount the device to it's mount point. There is one exception of this rule: if the device contains the 'tce' directory used for persistence the device will get mounted automatically.
  • The minimal set of file systems supported by "plain" TC / MC contains: EXT2, EXT3 (and EXT4 since TC 3.x), ISO9660, FAT, VFAT, and some more. Other frequently used one like NTFS, CIFS, NFS are available via extensions.

So if the content of a storage device is not immediately available via '/mnt/...' one will need to check that the device is mounted and that the file system in question is supported (which might require the installation of an extension as precondition).

Edit: I guess the '/boot' directory is in the "root" of your storage device (e.g. '/mnt/hda1/boot'). It is indeed a widely used convention to put the kernel (i.e. 'bzImage') and the initrd (i.e. 'tinycore.gz') into such a '/boot' directory on a disk. But this is not mandatory so other options exist, as long as the boot loader (e.g. GRUB) is aware of where to find those files.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2010, 11:17:21 PM by maro »