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On Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:52:27 +0000 Philip Whateley wrote: > Hi > > Some time ago I posted on the list asking about adding debian as a > dual boot onto an existing Ubuntu laptop. > > This was fairly successful except that I now have a problem with Grub. > > Ubuntu was already installed on (hd0,0). Debian is now installed on > (hd0,1) with separate swap and home partitions. > > The problem is that debian has installed its own grub onto hd0,1. I > had to edit the menu.lst file on the debian partition when I upgraded > from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 (fortunately I made a copy of the menu.lst > on hd0,0 before I restarted after the upgrade) otherwise grub on > debian couldn't see a valid ubuntu kernel. > > This means that whenever I upgrade, or install a new kernel in > Ubuntu, I will have to re-edit the menu.lst file on the debian > partition. > > Also, because the system initially boots from debian and then passes > to Ubuntu, I am getting lots of errors and warnings, as debian has the > ubuntu partition and swap partition mounted and ubuntu can't start > properly until the mounts are released. I now have a /var/log/syslog > approaching 3Gb! > > I would like to set up the system so it boots first from the Ubuntu > partition - is this as simple as executing > sudo grub-install '(hd0,0)' > and if so, do I execute this from ubuntu, or does the ubuntu partition > need to be unmounted? > > Many thanks > > Phil I had a multi-boot setup with many different Linuxes at one point. It made things interesting, but was OK in the end. I adopted 2 approaches at different times. One was to have a small partition (say 100MB) and have that as the /boot partition on each distro. This works well if you are manually crafting your own boot setup - all the kernels and initrds in one partition, maybe divided into directories/folders, etc. Can get a bit unwieldy though if any of your distros try to "work the magic" by itself. Another method, which is kind of a cop-out, is to have grub/lilo installed to the distro's main partition (/) - so if Debian has / on sda2 then Debian's grub/lilo gets installed to sda2 (not sda). Likewise if Ubuntu has / on sda1 then Ubuntu's grub/lilo is installed to sda1 (not sda). You'd also install an additional grub/lilo into the MBR as well, but this just presents a simple menu that then passes control to the grub/lilo for the chosen distro. It sounds complicated, but it's not. Essentially when booting you'd first be presented with the MBR menu; you make a selection (Debian) which then passes control to the boot code in sda2 (in this example), which happens to be grub/lilo... which presents you with a menu of which kernel to load and any other options you've specified. Grant. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html