I am building a 2.6.5 kernel to go on a system that is going to be a "tape recorder." so needs the sound to be working. I have built a couple of dead on arrival kernels and am getting tired of booting a rescue floppy, (tomsrtbt), and putting the original menu.lst file back so it will boot in to the old but working kernel that the Debian distribution disk put on. This means I must edit menu.lst which grub uses to let you choose which kernel or even which operating system to boot from such as Windows, etc. For anybody who is interested, making grub beep on a system with a local speaker that can beep is very easy. You just fine the line that begins with the word "title" that isn't a comment and put a Control-G at the end of the line since that line is printed on the screen anyway. The system I tried it on gave a nice loud tone. Now, here's the parts of menu.lst I don't completely understand. In the menu.lst file for a Debian distribution, here is what is in the two active booting paragraphs that are present. Remember that if you use the serial install method on a Debian distribution disk as in linux console=ttyS1,9600n81 You will automatically get a talking installation through a second computer if it is accessible and your console will default to serial when the system is up and running. The two paragraphs follow. title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.4.27-2-386 root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.27-2-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro console=ttyS1,9600n81 initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.4.27-2-386 savedefault boot title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.4.27-2-386 (recovery mode) root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.27-2-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro console=ttyS1,9600n81 single initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.4.27-2-386 savedefault boot The savedefault is supposed to make that paragraph the 0 entry. Both of these have savedefault as their last line. If I want the 2.6.5 kernel to be an option, it should be either 1 or 2 depending upon what that second savedefault did. Now, for the really interesting part. After setting up this menu.lst file with the two original paragraphs and my 2.6.5 start paragraph, I rebooted. The system gave the beep and I accidentally hit a number on the remote keyboard which was on the second computer. I should have hit the number on the computer that was booting to make the choice. What happened was that the booting computer beeped again and booted the recovery-mode version of that kernel. grub must be listening to the interrupts on the UARTS. At the point where I hit the number, there should have been no serial console alive yet. The number you hit on the remote keyboard makes no difference and I think you could hit any key to get this behavior, but it might be useful if it is consistent. Mainly, I am curious about the second savedefault line and what it actually does. Thank you. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK Systems Engineer OSU Information Technology Department Network Operations Group _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list