Comment 20 for bug 107976

Congratulations!

If you want to try installing Grub in bootsector of /dev/hda2, run grub from a terminal and take a look below:

--------------------------------- typical grub session ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
sudo grub
$ password: (type the password of your account)
grub>
grub> root (hd0,1) (hd0,1 in grub notation is /dev/hda2 in device notation)
 Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83 ( in this case my partition was formated as reiserfs)
grub> setup (hd0,1)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/reiserfs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/reiserfs_stage1_5 (hd0,7)"... 18 sectors are embedded.succeeded
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0,7) (hd0,1)1+18 p (hd0,1)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/menu.lst"... succeeded
Done.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You are right about XOSL. They need another partition. Can to be a FAT, FAT32 or an special format for Xosl.
The size required is minimal, less than 1 MB, and if you have a Windows installation in a FAT32 partition, they can share the same partition. But if you choose FAT32, you should create a partition with at least 32 MB. For some reason, seems that FAT32 in lesser partitions have problems.
Usually I create a FAT32 partition and install DOS (FreeDos, DrDos or Ms-Dos) along with some utilities like tools for cloning and reparing disk.
If you don't want to install and boot DOS, you can install Xosl in a logical partition. But I'm not sure if this will work when the partition is located over cilinder 1024. In this situation we need the Int13 extensions.

I agree with you. All this workaround should be only a temporary solution. I'm still waiting for Ubuntu 7.04-1.