Skip to main content

Is it possible to "return" to GRUB after booting Linux without restarting

I am dual-booting Windows and Linux on my SSD and find myself often switching between the two OSes. The SSD is really fast and both OSes boot in about 3 seconds once selected in GRUB. However, it takes forever (about 30 seconds) for my BIOS, RAID and second SATA controller to initialize before I'm finally in GRUB.


So I was wondering if it is possible to skip these initializations and just "return" to GRUB once I have booted Linux. Ideally I would also be able to do the same from within Windows but my hope is not very high there :)


I did a little search online and found nothing but a somewhat out-dated linux loader - loadlin.exe, which one could run from within Dos or Windows 95/98 to boot Linux. So at least the concept of switching OSes without rebooting is not new. Anyone know of a current tool that does this?


If not, is there a technical issue that prevents us from writing such a program or is there simply not enough demand?


UPDATE: A friend of mine just told me about Kexec. Using that it seems to be possible to start a different Linux kernel from within a running kernel, but is it possible to go back to GRUB or start a windows installation directly?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

How do I transmit a single hexadecimal value serial data in PuTTY using an Alt code?

I am trying to sent a specific hexadecimal value across a serial COM port using PuTTY. Specifically, I want to send the hex codes 9C, B6, FC, and 8B. I have looked up the Alt codes for these and they are 156, 182, 252, and 139 respectively. However, whenever I input the Alt codes, a preceding hex value of C2 is sent before 9C, B6, and 8B so the values that are sent are C2 9C, C2 B6, and C2 8B. The value for FC is changed to C3 FC. Why are these values being placed before the hex value and why is FC being changed altogether? To me, it seems like there is a problem internally converting the Alt code to hex. Is there a way to directly input hex values without using Alt codes in PuTTY? Answer What you're seeing is just ordinary text character set conversion. As far as PuTTY is concerned, you are typing (and reading) text , not raw binary data, therefore it has to convert the text to bytes in whatever configured character set before sending it over the wire. In other words, when y...
Post a Comment
Read more

linux - Extract/save a mail attachment using bash

Using normal bash tools (ie, built-ins or commonly-available command-line tools), is it possible, and how to extract/save attachments on emails? For example, say I have a nightly report which arrives via email but is a zip archive of several log files. I want to save all those zips into a backup directory. How would I accomplish that? Answer If you're aiming for portability, beware that there are several different versions of mail(1) and mailx(1) . There's a POSIX mailx command, but with very few requirements. And none of the implementations I have seem to parse attachments anyway. You might have the mpack package . Its munpack command saves all parts of a MIME message into separate files, then all you have to do is save the interesting parts and clean up the rest. There's also metamail . An equivalent of munpack is metamail -wy .
Post a Comment
Read more

ubuntu - Why does my USB hdd returns SG_IO: bad/missing sense data?

I am able to boot and run commands from external USB hdd; the message in question appears for about 45 seconds then booting continues. GRUB2 is installed on internal HDD. When choosing to boot directly to /dev/sdb the message doesn't appear, however boot time is about the same as booting to internal HDD. /dev/sdb: Timing cached reads: 1018 MB in 2.00 seconds = 508.97 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 80 MB in 3.03 seconds = 26.37 MB/sec pfeiffep@de:~$ sudo hdparm -i /dev/sdb /dev/sdb: SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 HDIO_GET_IDENTITY failed: Invalid argument Gparted correctly identifies the drive as SAMSUNG MP0402H. Any ideas how to remedy the HDIO & SG_IO messages?
Post a Comment
Read more

Desktop reboots itself on sleep or hibernate

I have been using an ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard for main home desktop workstation, operating Windows Vista x64. This computer has right from day one not been able to enter hibernate or standby; after Windows performs its final actions and brings the machine down, it would automatically revive itself for a reboot. Updating to the second latest BIOS (1201)has not helped (the latest BIOS revision would induce video refresh problems rendering it unusable). I have been reading related discussions on incidents similar to mine to no avail of a true workable solution. They appear to be more speculative guesses rather than actual knowledge on the inner workings of motherboard hardware. Does anybody have any electronic engineering experience on PC energy-saving standards to provide a more informed opinion how to go about getting this to work? More stories: this motherboard could not even reboot properly the first thing i used it. It was due to refresh rate of the onboard GPU, which had no influe...
Post a Comment
Read more