[Mageia-dev] Grub and Grub2

Sat Feb 4 10:32:45 CET 2012

Michel Catudal a écrit :
+> Le 03/02/2012 19:05, Pierre Jarillon a écrit :
+>> I have installed Mageia on a disk after Ubuntu.
+>> After the install, I reboot and Ubuntu was ignored in Grub.
+>> The owner of the PC was not happy and tought that Mageia is bad.
+>>
+>> I have not found how to restore an access to Ubuntu and after an 
+>> hour, I have
+>> reinstalled Ubuntu which install its grub2 allowing to boot on both 
+>> systems.
+>>
+>> In Caudron, grub2 is not still used. Is time to switch to Grub2 ?
+>>
+>
+> I have installed both ubuntu and mageia with no problem with regard to 
+> booting ubuntu.
+> You must have left ubuntu put the bootloader on the MBR. If you are 
+> going to install several Linux distribution you should install the OS 
+> on partitions and not on the MBR.
+>
+> On my PC I use xosl as a bootloader and always install grub on the 
+> boot partition. A few years back I got burned when I forgot to change 
+> the default.
+> One thing that pisses me off on all the Linux distribution, including 
+> Mageia is that the fact that the bootloader is on the MBR is sorta 
+> hidden and it is not obvious how to switch it to the partition. It 
+> should be on the top with boxes with the choice of where we want it 
+> and a message that is not cryptic and makes it obvious what that does. 
+> That way I don't see where we could accidentaly screw up our system.
+> There is no problem if you have only one operating system to have grub 
+> on the MBR but brain dead to put it there when you have several OS. 
+> Specially when you have diffferent incompatible versions of grub.
+>
+> The way I recovered the messed up boot was to boot on my xosl boot 
+> diskette and restore its boot.
+>
+> Here is the layout of one of my hard disks.
+>
+> Périphérique Amorce  Début        Fin      Blocs     Id  Système
+> /dev/sda1               1           1        8001   78  Inconnu <-- xosl
+> /dev/sda2               2         261     2088450    6  FAT16 <-- Free 
+> Dos
+> /dev/sda3   *         262         276      120487+  83  Linux
+> /dev/sda4             277      243201  1951295062+   5  Etendue
+> /dev/sda5             277         750     3807373+  82  Linux swap / 
+> Solaris
+> /dev/sda6             751         765      120456   83  Linux
+> /dev/sda7             766         780      120456   83  Linux
+> /dev/sda8             781         795      120456   83  Linux
+> /dev/sda9             796       60000   475564131   83  Linux
+> /dev/sda10          60001      120000   481949968+  83  Linux
+> /dev/sda11         120001      160000   321299968+  83  Linux
+> /dev/sda12         160001      200000   321299968+  83  Linux
+> /dev/sda13         200001      243201   347012001   83  Linux
+>
+>
+> Michel
+>
+So the key point seems to be a separate boot partition, which links to 
+the root partitions of the different systems, which each have their 
+system-specific boot loaders.
+That could probably be done with grub without too much problem, if it 
+can't be installed like that already.
+(The initial boot step simply chain-loading to whatever system, as it 
+already does with ms-based systems.)
+Sounds like a lot more stable approach.  And it shouldn't take any 
+longer to boot to Linux.
+Or maybe we should package xosl ?
+
+-- 
+André
+
+