[Grml] Boot loaders

[Michael Whapples]

Hello,
In the past I have always used lilo for my boot loader, partly due to 
lilo being the first boot loader I learnt and so never really gave much 
time to learn grub and partly due to having knowledge on how to get the 
boot loader screen of lilo to beep when it appears (information on the 
GRML wiki about accessibility).

Last night I came across one of the problems with lilo and I believe 
grub might be able to solve this. The problem was that the GRML kernel I 
am running (2.6.31-grml) was updated by apt in an upgrade. I forgot to 
run lilo before rebooting and so my system became impossible to boot 
from the HD. At some point in the past my BIOS settings had been lost 
and so my CD drive is now on a lower priority than the HD for booting 
(not being able to see, I can't use the BIOS by myself to correct the 
BIOS boot order, so I had no way to correct the problem).

I believe grub allows the user to enter a command at the boot screen and 
so boot any device (not quite sure where I have seen this but I think it 
may even have been here).

My questions:
1. Am I right about grub being able to accept commands at the boot 
screen allowing booting of anything (even if it isn't in the menu list)?
2. Is it possible to get the grub boot screen to beep like the lilo one 
as described in the accessibility information on the GRML wiki?
3. Have you got any extra reasons you would suggest changing to grub 
from lilo or is there a different boot manager you would suggest?

Michael Whapples