Gentoo is a distribution where you decide about software you install. This was reason enough for me to give Grub2 a spin. Installation wasn’t that hard after unmasking and keywording the grub package:

echo "sys-boot/grub:2 **" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
echo "sys-boot/grub:2" >> /etc/portage/package.unmask
emerge -av sys-boot/grub:2

Next thing on our todo list is going through the config files /etc/default/grub and /etc/grub.d/* which are used to generate grub.conf by invoking grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

As I didn’t want to kill my current grub installation, I decided not to write Grub2 code into the MBR and load it via my current bootloader instead. Using grub2-install –grub-setup=/bin/true /dev/sda the boot images are moved into the right location. Finally, the menu.lst file of the old Grub needs a new block to boot Grub2:

title=GRUB2
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/grub2/core.img

That way testing can be fun as you still have a bootable machine – even if you mess up Grub2.