Boot loader is a small program that is usually first program to start from computer hard disk which in turn starts operating system.
Most Linux use GRUB to boot themselves. GRUB is considered as generic boot loader. GRUB user manual can be found here.
Grub4Dos is yet another boot loader which is upper-compatible with GRUB (i.e. it has all features that GRUB has plus many extra features). Contrary to GRUB it can be installed to FAT/NTFS filesystems, can mount NTFS filesystems and much more. Help regarding Grub4Dos can be found here.
The latest source tarball can be found here.
To install extract the archive into a directory, then open terminal in the directory and type:
# ./configure --prefix=/usr && make && make install
You may need to replace "make install" with "sudo make install"
In order to show icons in program you need to rebuild icon cache with:
# gtk-update-icon-cache -f /usr/share/icons/hicolor
All dependencies are listed in README file.
There are two ways to start Boot Loader Manager:
Using menu entry
The tarball installs a menu entry named "Boot Loader Manager" in System or Administration category
Using terminal
Open terminal window and type:
# boot-loader-manager
The program needs adminstrative previleges to work properly, so some DE's like gnome can ask you for password for root account.
Then the main GUI opens and then rest all is self-explanatory.
In the main GUI click "Install new bootloader" button.
The installer window starts. Rest all should be self explanatory
Installing to USB drives:
It also possible to install boot loader to USB drives, but your
computer must be able to boot from USB drives at first case. Most
modern computers are able to do so.
In second screen you should select a partition on your USB drive to install. It is usually recommended to install boot loader to MBR in this case.
Installing to internal hard disk:
Before considering this it is best to have an emergency boot disk (such
as Linux live CD) ready, in case your computer becomes unbootable.
It
is usually safest to install boot loader to MBR, but in case the MBR is
not large enough installation will fail. Then retry by installing to
partition boot sector.
Installing to CD/DVD/ISO image:
To install boot loader to a CD or DVD or an ISO image (experimental),
when you are asked to choose partition where to install, you should
select last option i.e. "CD/DVD/ISO image (experimental)".
You will be asked for CD/DVD device to install, data, burn options, etc. at time of installation. If you choose to install bootloader to CD or DVD, ensure that the disk is blank. (You have option to blank a rewritable disk)
However to use this feature you must have cd-drive, cddetect, dvd+rw-mediainfo, cdrdao, cdrecord, growisofs and dvd+rw-format.
In the main GUI click "Configure existing bootloader" button.
The configuration window starts. Rest all should be self explanatory.
a. program yet doesn't support find --set-root command to set root. In that case OS type is automatically set to custom.
b. For older grub which doesn't support uuid command to set root drive, root command is used which uses BIOS drive numbers. Since it is impossible to correctly determine these, selected root drive may be wrong if you have more than one hard disk. To override this, use grub4dos instead of grub.
c. Boot Loader Manager doesn't yet support paths like (hdx,x)/somefile