Hi, I am new to UNIX/Linux. My laptop came with XP and I bought an external harddrive to install Linux in it that way I will have double boot but soon after I restarted the linux after instal, GRUB reared its head. I could no longer boot to my window and annoyingly I formated the laptop and installed RedHat. Now I want to install Solaris on the external hd but I cannot go past the "GRUB". Any ideas on what I can do to get rid of so I can install Solaris? Your assistance will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Hi ozizza2vau, and welcome to this forum.

I'm not sure I understand your situation. Do you mean you re-formatted the laptops internal drive? Which version of Fedora (and grub) did you install? Also, where did you install it, MBR, separate boot partition, /boot under Fedora /?

I'm not familiar with Solaris so can't advise you about that.

One of the ways for a beginning linux user to install a distro is to use either Gparted or PartedMagic, both of which are free (Google is your friend). These allow you to partition the hard drives to suit your needs. One of the features of these programs is that you can "LABEL" each partition which makes installing easier as opposed to the UUID (a long series of hex characters) device identifier which is hard to remember and will change if a partition is changed (resized, etc.).

Some good sources of information are the documentation for your distro, several linux oriented forums (including the one for your distro), books library, etc.) and user groups if there is one in your area. I particularly like "Linux in a Nutshell" from O'Reilly books ( all kinds of good information there).

Tom

They say they installed redhat, and they have a redhat symbol in there os thing on the left, so i'm guessing they actually installed redhat, not fedora.
@ the op; what version of redhat are you using? is it redhat linux, or redhat enterprise linux?
If it's plain redhat, then you are using a outdated linux distribution, and i'm sure everyone will agree that you should upgrade to the newest fedora (what redhats equivalent today) or alternatively install an up to date version of a different distro; Linux Mint seems to be popular as a 'easy to use' distro today.
If you are infact using redhat enterprise linux, then you could alway ring them up for the support you paid good money for.

We need to know which version you're using so we can determine what version of grub you are using and give you the correct advice.

My question is how do I get rid of GRUB so I can install Solaris?

if you want a decent answer, you need to provide a decent question, like where you've installed the bootloader grub, on the embrace or on the external hard drive. you should just be able to overwrite grub with what ever boot loader Solaris uses

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If you hit f8; usually before the grub screen comes up while POST is running ,you should get a BIOS option as to what device you wish to boot from. If you don't intervene, it boots from the default parameter in your BIOS settings which is usually To boot from your HD.

to get rid of grub install solaris in a traditional way..
look for on which media you are installing solaris..
opensolaris asks for where to install the boot loader and it also
uses grub as its boot program..
so install it on the hd or external hd and boot your machine
using that media where you have installed the solaris boot loader..