If you have GRUB properly installed in your machine, then run /etc/grub-install /dev/hdx. This will install grub in the MBR. grub-install is a script and you can go thru it to check what it does. It invokes grub (/usr/local/sbin/grub) to do the final job. You can comment out that part and invoke the grub shell yourself.
Configuration file for GRUB is /boot/grub/menu.lst From the grub code it looks like the name is hard coded. By default you won't have it in the /boot/grub. If you have downloaded the source of grub then you can find menu.lst in docs/menu.lst. Copy this file to /boot/grub and change it to your needs. One of the biggest advantage of grub is you need NOT run grub again when you change the configuration file. So just make the changes to menu.lst and reboot..
This boot loader is real cool. I've Linux on my primary hard disk and Windows2000 on secondary disk. I can boot Windows2000 of secondary disk without any problem (ofcourse I did play a lot to get it worked). It gives you a bash like shell where you can try out lot more option at the time of boot.
So once you have GRUB installed, you won't need to run it again unless MBR gets corrupted. Only using grub shell effectively at boot up and changing menu.lst will do the most of work.
Following are some of the links for info on GRUB :
http://www.mcc.ac.uk/grub/grub_toc.html http://www.cn.ibm.com/developerWorks/education/linux/l-grub_eng/l-grub/index http://www.uruk.org/orig-grub/ http://www.linux.nf/grub.html
One more advantage: Create a GRUB boot floppy and you can boot into any system if MBR is corrupted.
Hope this helps..
-Mayuresh
If memory serves me right, On Jan 20, Anand Iyer wrote :
AI: AI:I could make chganges to lilo.conf and load the bootloader with command lilo AI: AI:How do I go about making changes in grub.conf (grub.conf changes i am AI:comfortable with but still doubts linger). AI:how do I load these changes. AI:What when Grub gets overwritten, say by lilo, how do you get grub AI:running again. AI: AI:Anand AI: AI: AI:_______________________________________________ AI:http://mm.ilug-bom.org.in/mailman/listinfo/linuxers AI: