No grub!

[boskey603]

Hello. This is my situation. I have an HP notebook with Vista (sp 2, 64 bit). I used Vista's disk manager to shrink the drive and left 100g of unallocated space. I then booted from the LinuxMint disc and ran the installation process. Everything works fine, so here is the problem: I want my Linux OS to exist on my computer and I want it completely private. I understand that passwords (which I do use) protect me from unauthorized use. But that is not good enough, I want no one else who uses my computer (especially when I'm not around) to know that a Linux OS exists (purely for privacy purposes). Grub gives away my dirty little secret! I tried uninstalling grub and using the live CD to force a boot. The live CD had an option that read "boot from hard drive" but that didn't work. I also tried to remove grub and force a boot from a supergrub disc, but that won't work unless I install grub from the begining, which is exactly what I don't want. So this is my question (finally!): How can I keep both OS on my computer and use an outside source (like a disc or, more preferably, a flash drive) to boot Linux for me?

[boskey603]

No answers for me? Did this newbie stump all you Linux brains with the first question?
One more thing; the SuperGrub disc will not boot Linux unless the grub boot loader is installed. This of course begs the question, why would I need to use the SuperGrub disc if grub is installed? I would think this would not be this complicated.

[Kloschüssel]

Good morning.

Just wait until I finish my coffee.

If your computer supports booting from usb stick, you may just remove the unix stuff from the harddrive grub so that it boots automatically whatever you want. Then, on the usb stick you have a grub installed which includes the previous grub configuration that includes to boot into linux. Then in the bios change the boot priority so that it first checks the usb bootable before examining the harddrive. This way, when you plug in the usb stick, it should show up another grub than the original one which would be no longer interactive. Basically this is also possible to do with a CD. Usb stick is just readable and therefore easier to setup and test.

Please note that this doesn't prevent others from seeing the partitions! One that can physically access the computer, can always take the harddrive or boot a live cd or use tools out of the installed operating system he can acccess and do whatever he wants on it. You just can't help against that, but you might consider to encrypt single partitions to prevent others from reading that content.

PS: if this is something odd that you want to do with a business notebook from your company, consider asking your administrator if it is just fine or you might cause yourself some trouble one day. personally if I were your administrator, I would kick your arse if you would do something behind my back and you won't ever get your hands on a computer anymore.

[yancek]

This site explains making a Grub boot CD. You could copy your current menu.lst file to the /boot/grub directory of the iso. If you don't want to see a menu, you could have your selection to boot Mint set under default and remove the hash mark (#) from before the hiddenmenu line. Seems a little strange to me as to why you would want to do this, but...??

GRUB Manual: Installation