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 and ReiserFS, BSD ufs, MS-DOS FAT16 and FAT32, and Minix 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 any problem or bug, please submit it to <bug-grub@gnu.org> with information about your computer and what you did as much as possible. For example, your operating system and the geometries of your drives are very important. 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, send e-mail to <bug-grub-request@gnu.org>. You can get the latest GRUB CVS tree from `:pserver:anoncvs@subversions.gnu.org:/home/cvs', module `grub'. Just hit enter when CVS prompts you for a password. See <http://www.gnu.org/software/devel.html#CVS> for more details. If you are really interested in the rapid development, you can subscribe to the list <commit-grub@gnu.org>, by sending e-mail with the subject "subscribe" to <commit-grub-request@gnu.org>. 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.