You may find that grub is pretty useless when your menu.lst is missing or misconfigured. It’s not easy to figure out how to make grub tell you where the files are that you need. Here’s how to find what you need in order to boot, just using the grub bootloader.

GNU GRUB is easy to set up, it’s just got it’s own funky syntax that you don’t really see anywhere else.
GRUB stands for GRand Unified Bootloader
GNU GRUB is a multiboot boot loader derived from the original GRUB. It is the first software program that runs when a computer starts. …

I usually make my boot partition ext2 because it doesn’t stay mounted and doesn’t get written to unless i’m installing a new kernel or tweaking the options like vga=0×317 or whatever. But strangely enough, when I boot, grub sees the boot partition, grub.conf, and the kernel and loads with no problem. But when I try to mount /dev/sda1 from a shell it doesn’t seem to know what i’m talking about!

No matter what flavor of linux distribution you’re using, the default grub bootloader background image is probably pretty generic. Or, maybe you just want to personalize it. Since your system isn’t booted very far, your toolset is rather limited, so there are strict requirements for the image.