Re: Multibooting with Grub2

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 3:41 AM, Liam Proven <lproven@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 6:20 AM, Tom H <tomh0665@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 9:37 PM, Liam Proven <lproven@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I am setting up a multiboot PC for testing. It has FreeBSD 8.1, Ubuntu
9.04, 10.10 and Debian 5, so far. I plan to add more.

The snag is the 'buntus and Debian all want to run Grub2, & Grub2 only
wants to go in the MBR. I don't want it in the MBR - it means that if
I am in 1 distro & get a kernel update, the Grub from the other distro
doesn't see it. Only 1 copy of Grub2 can be active at a time.

I want a bootloader in each OS's root partition and a separate 3rd
party one in the MBR. Currently I'm using XOSL in a tiny 32MB FreeDOS
partition, but it can't boot the Linuxes 'cos their Grub2s have gone.

Grub2 issues terrifying warnings if I try to install it to the
partition instead of the disk. Is this in fact safe?

Grub1 seems to be deprecated and missing in 10.10 and Debian "Lenny" -
the choices are Grub2 or LILO.

grub1 is still available, as "grub".

I think that, unfortunately, the 1st distro I tried is based directly
off Debian, not off Ubuntu any more, and sadly, this appears to mean
that Grub1 was no longer an option. There was no package for it in
Synaptic, so I went with Lilo.

Don't forget to have a separate
ext2/3xt3 "/boot" or to have an ext2/ext3 "/" if you use
grub/grub1/grub-legacy rather than grub2 because grub1 can't handle an
ext4 "/boot".

Aha! I didn't know that. Thanks, very useful tip.

Since I do not own a hard disk bigger than 150GB, I never choose ext4,
always ext3, but I may have left some installations on defaults and
that can mean ext4 now.

You don't have to install grub2 to the MBR. The installed even offers
to install to a partition now; it might use block lists but I'm not
sure about that.

Good to know. Thanks again.

You can only have one grub2 "active" in the MBR but you can chainload
with either chainload or configfile to the other grub2 installs.

I have tried this, but never got it working reliably.

There was just a thread in help-grub where someone couldn't load
FreeBSD with grub2. I've just tried in three VMs (Maverick, Natty, and
Sid) and didn't get anywhere and the OP has posted that he found a
thread in grub-devel which said that there were problems with freebsd.

:-(

[FYI, when I attach the FreeBSD disk to one of the other VMs, the BSD
partitions are detected (they are listed with "dmesg | grep bsd"),
grub-mkdevicemap adds the disk to "/boot/grub/device.map", "grub-probe
--target=drive --device /dev/sdb5" lists the disk as "(hd1,msdos1)"
(strangely not "(hd1,msdos1,bsdX)", but neither update-grub nor
os-prober (the same thing, I know, but I thought that I'd check
anyway) detect it. At the grub cli, ls lists "(hd1,msdos1)" and
"(hd1,msdos1,msdos4)".]

I find I cannot mount my BSD partition. I have installed the UFS
utilities and can even fsck it, but I can't mount it. I've tried
``mount'', ``mount -t ufs'', & ``mount -t ufs -o=ufs2'' (or something
like that) - nothing works.

*But* it suddenly occurs to me - with FreeBSD 8, which PC-BSD 8.1 is
based upon, there are multiple slices within that 1 primary partition.
Maybe I need to mount slices directly. I don't know how to do that.

Why can't BSD just play the game, like other PC OSs, and just
understand & use the PC partitioning system directly? >_<

Sorry, I forgot - what I /was/ going to say was: if Linux can't mount
the partition, does that not mean that Grub can't look inside it and
see what kernels or whatever are in there for Grub to add to its boot
menu?

--
Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
Email: lproven@xxxxxxxxx • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven@xxxxxxxxx
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven • MSN: lproven@xxxxxxxxxxx • ICQ: 73187508

--
ubuntu-users mailing list
ubuntu-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users

Relevant Pages

  • Re: ubuntu-users Digest, Vol 46, Issue 194
    ... Vista (running ubuntu) ... Ubuntu Gaming/Vista Partition ... and lets you install, but it never completes. ... GTA San Andreas won't work on my laptop while running vista (Even though I ...
    (Ubuntu)
  • Re: How to Create Dual-Booting System
    ... partitioned and I accepted all the defaults that Ubuntu suggested. ... Well, if it where openSUSE, we would have guessed. ... following questions before you install another one next to it. ... make FAT32) Primary partition of around 20GB these days, ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)
  • Re: Bootin 4 OSes?
    ... Ubuntu, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and XP. ... Install XP First, or if it is installed, figure out how much room you ... Windows), set up your /Swap as a primary partition, then use the rest as ... I wanted to install OS/2 again / too but I am not sure anymore yet ...
    (Ubuntu)
  • Re: help to install ubuntu
    ... > I got Ubuntu CD shipped by them and tried to install. ... If you are going to manually partition, it would help to know a bit more ... and Linux Swap with "partition magic". ...
    (Ubuntu)
  • Re: How to delete all partitions for a complete reinstall
    ... recovery CDs turns up to kill *only* the first partition, ... Sorry to ask this question in ubuntu list. ... During the XP install process you can delete all of your partitions ... partition in the new GRUB menu (shows on boot allowing you to choose ...
    (Ubuntu)