Hi,

I have installed three distros. The first two went fine. When I entered the third one, PCLinuxOS, I lost the choice of the second one. On my booting screen I now just have the choice of the first or the third.

So I tried "control centre, boot,set up boot system" and found a panel where I could add another Linux as follows:

Label: linux-0
image
boot: /dev/sda Western digital etc
Append:

Trouble is, I can't figure out what to put in the blank Image and Append spaces to resurrect my 2nd distro. What is a Linux image? In Append, do I just put in the name of the distro to be booted?

Hope someone can help here, please

What was the second distribution? You need to find the information necessary to boot that OS, such as the partition it is installed too, the kernel it is using, and if it needs an initrd. The easiest way to do this would be to mount the partition it is installed too and looking at the files inside of /boot.

The second distro is Zorin OS, installed to /dev/sda2.

How do I mount that partition and find that file?

If PCLinux os uses Grub2, what I would assume, type as root into a terminal and look at the output. Sometimes Grub 2 "looses" an OS during an update or install, nothing to worry about, just use the mentioned command.

I'm sorry to say that update-grub isn't recognised. I tried it, as root, in PCLinunOS, with the variations of spacing I could invent with the same result.

Perhaps this distro uses Grub 1?

Yes it does.

Besides Zorin, what is the other OS you have installed? If you are mixing Grub2 and Grub Legacy it makes things a little more difficult but not impossible.

Could you boot into one of your systems and post your partition information? as root: fdisk -l (lower case Letter L in command).

The three installed are
/dev/sda1 PCLinuxOS
/dev/sda2 Zorin OS
/dev/sda4 Pardus

I should have posted this at the start. Sorry. Here's the terminal output:

[jennifer@localhost ~]$ su
Password:
[root@localhost jennifer]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 400.1 GB, 400087375360 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 48641 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0000e8d2

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 7740 62171518+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 * 7741 12332 36885240 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 18723 19500 6249254+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 12333 18722 51327675 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 18723 19500 6249253+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order
[root@localhost jennifer]#

I didn't realise that there were two Grubs. I can ditch Zorin and just work off the other two if things are difficult. I've nothing on the computer to save at the moment.

I remember, years ago, when I mixed Grub and Lilo distros. That was a real mess.

For understand which version of grub that distro use you can search:
/boot/grub/grub.cfg (if is present means that you use grub2)
or
/boot/grub/menu.lst (that means that you use grub 1)

Check the link below, Grub tutorial. Go down to section 5.B. Might help. It explains using Grub2 and Grub Legacy together.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/g...mozTocId982259

Didn't think that simple booting up could be so convoluted! I'll study Dedoimedo's tutorial, when the time, inclination and brainpower all come together, so until then I'll just leave Zorin lurking in the background.

Thanks for your replies. Never a dull moment with Linux, is there?

best wishes