GRUB from the ground up

http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/grub/grub.htm

Grub is a world-class boot loader with insufficient documentation. In many ways it blows the doors of LILO. For instance, it's MUCH easier to use Knoppix to rebuild a grub boot loader than to rebuild a LILO boot loader. However, until you're comfortable with grub, it might seem just the opposite. All too often grub dumps you at a grub> prompt with no hint of what you should do. You might have heard that a successful reboot is just three commands away, but which commands? The state of grub's documentation is such that you can't figure it out unless you already know grub.

That catch 22 is the very purpose of this document. This document will to give you enough grub expertise that you can create a grub boot floppy on a working machine with grub installed (not necessarily as the bootloader, just installed), and use that floppy to bust back into a Linux machine with a blown bootloader, and then use that floppy to actually install grub as the bootloader.

This document does not discuss using grub to boot or dual boot Windows, mach, BSD, or other non-Linux operating systems. I might write on that subject later. But in the meantime, once you're familiar with the principles and practices of grub, given some study of existing documentation you'll probably be able to use grub to boot non-Linux operating systems.