On a BIOS system you run grub-install /dev/sda. Besides writing boot code to the disk, which directory does the command populate with GRUB's runtime modules and its generated core image?
LPIC-1 Exam 101-500, objective 102. Linux installation and package management medium
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How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Correct /boot/grub
Correct. grub-install copies the modules for the target platform into /boot/grub (/boot/grub2 on Red Hat derivatives) and builds core.img there before embedding it.
Not correct /etc/grub.d
Wrong. /etc/grub.d contains the shell scripts that grub-mkconfig runs to produce menu entries, not binary modules.
Not correct /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc
Wrong direction. That is the platform directory shipped by the package, from which grub-install copies; it is a source, not a destination.
Not correct /etc/default/grub
Wrong. That is a single settings file of shell-style variables, not a directory, and grub-install does not touch it.
Why
GRUB 2 is modular: the tiny boot sector loads core.img, and core.img loads further .mod files at boot time from its boot directory. grub-install therefore has two jobs, copying the module set into /boot/grub and writing the boot image so the firmware can reach it. Because the modules are read at boot, /boot must be on a filesystem GRUB itself can drive.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page grub-install(8)
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 102 and space the ones you get wrong.
More questions on this objective
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- Which file is the configuration file that GRUB 2 generates, and which administrators are told not to edit by hand on a typical Linux distribution? machine-checked
- You replaced the boot disk in a BIOS/MBR system and need to write the GRUB 2 boot loader into the master boot record of /dev/sda, installing the required GRUB modules under /boot. Which command does that? machine-checked
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