The GRUB Boot Menu

The first JNode related information you will see after booting from a JNode CDROM image is the GRUB bootloader page. The GNU GRUB bootloader is responsible for selecting a JNode configuration from a menu, loading the corresponding kernel image and parameters into RAM and causing the JNode kernel to start executing.

When GRUB starts, it displays the bootloader page and pauses for a few seconds. If you do nothing, GRUB will automatically load and start the default configuration. Pressing any key at this point will interrupt the automatic boot sequence and allow you to select a specific configuration. You can use the UP-ARROW and DOWN-ARROW to choose a JNode configuration, then hit ENTER to boot it up.

There are a number of JNode configurations in the menu:

• The configurations that include "MP" in the description enable JNode's multiprocessor support on a capable machine. Since JNode's multiprocessor support is not fully functional, you should probably avoid these configurations for now.
• The configurations the include "GUI" in the description will start up the JNode GUI. Configurations without this tag will start up the JNode command shell on a text console.
• The other difference between the configurations is in the sets of plugins that they load. In general, loading more plugins will cause JNode to use more RAM.

It is currently not a good idea to boot JNode straight to the GUI. If want to run the GUI, it is best to boot the one of the non-GUI configurations; typically "JNode (all plugins)". Then from the text console, run the following commands:

JNode /> gc

JNode /> startawt