README

This is GNU GRUB, the GRand Unified Bootloader.  GRUB is intended to
provide important bootloader features that are missing from typical
personal computer BIOSes:

  - provides fully-featured command line and graphical interfaces
  - recognizes fdisk partitions and BSD disklabels
  - can dynamically read Linux ext2fs, ReiserFS, JFS and XFS, BSD ufs,
    MS-DOS FAT16 and FAT32, Minix fs, and VSTa fs filesystems, plus
    hardcoded blocklists
  - can boot Multiboot-compliant kernels (such as GNU Mach), as well
    as standard Linux and *BSD kernels

See the file NEWS for a description of recent changes to GRUB.

If you are interested in the network support, see the file
README.netboot under the directory netboot.

See the file INSTALL for instructions on how to build and install the
GRUB data and program files. See the GRUB manual for details about
using GRUB as your bootloader. Type "info grub" in the shell prompt.

GNU GRUB has a page on the web. See:

	http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub.en.html (English)
	http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub.ja.html (Japanese)

If you have any suggestions or ideas, please send electronic mail to the
GRUB mailing list <bug-grub@gnu.org>. The archive of the list is
available at <http://www.mail-archive.com/bug-grub%40gnu.org/>.

When you encounter a problem or a bug, first of all, read the chapter
"Reporting bugs" in the document. Very often, people ask us their
questions with little (or no) information about their systems. That's
quite useless, because we have to *guess* what you did, what was
displayed and what really happened. Please notice that we may not see
your computer directly. So, whenever you report a bug, you must include
enough information so that we can understand what happened and even
reproduce your problem in our machines.

Once you have realized how to write a bug report, please submit it to
<bug-grub@gnu.org> with information about your computer and what you did
_as much as possible_. Excessive information is always better than no
information.

When you enhance/fix GRUB, please send the patch to <bug-grub@gnu.org>.
Do not forget to write your changes to ChangeLog; That helps us to
understand your changes correctly. And it is preferable that your patch
is the unified format. Just append `-u' option to the command `diff'.

NOTE: you should stick to the GNU Coding Standards. Look at the URL
<http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html> to understand it.

DEVELOPERS: to subscribe to the mailing list, see
<http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-grub>. You can get the latest
GRUB CVS tree from `:pserver:anoncvs@subversions.gnu.org:/cvsroot/grub',
module `grub'. Just hit enter when CVS prompts you for a password.
See <http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/grub/>, for more details.

If you are really interested in the rapid development, you can subscribe
to the list <commit-grub@gnu.org>. See
<http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/commit-grub>. This list is not for
a general purpose but will notify you of CVS logs whenever any developer
checks in patches.

  IMPORTANT SIZE LIMITS:

  - For the FFS stage1.5, if you want to fit into the "bootloader" area
    of an FFS partition, it cannot be larger than 512 * 14 disk sectors,
    or 7168 bytes.