Problem with boot record / grub
 

I recently installed openSUSE 10.3 on a system that was using Kubuntu and it's boot loader. openSUSE is installed on a different partition. Now I can't for the life of me get rid of the Kubuntu boot loader. I've tried using yast->bootloader in suse (I can boot the installation using an option on the install disc), uninstalling grub from kubuntu, uninstalling/reinstalling grub from suse, using the boot recovery tools on the suse disc, and using the command "bo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/HD count=1 bs=512".

None of these attempts have had any effect on the boot loader. This is driving me insane!

There is only 2 main boot loaders in Linux; Grub and Lilo.

Both Suse and Kubuntu use Grub as the standard boot loader. Thus by getting rid of Kubuntu Grub you get the same version 0.97 back in Suse, with the exception of the splash image.

A boot loader cannot be uninstalled because it is not part of a filing system. You overwrite one with another.

In any Linux with Grub you can instruct its boot loader to take over the MBR of the boot disk, say device sda by a terminal command in root console
For Lilo the equivalent is
You can have 100 Linux but only one MBR. Therefore it is your right to allow any distro's boot loader to take control of the MBR by the above commands.

I'm sorry, I didn't make the problem clear.

openSUSE doesn't show up on the loader that Kubuntu installed. Prior to installing Kubuntu, I had openSUSE and Vista running fine with grub from the opensuse installation. After installing Kubuntu (same partition as suse), the boot loader was changed. Now it only has three selectionsh, all new: Kubuntu, Kubuntu repair mode, and memtest.

When I installed opensuse 10.3, I installed it on a different physical drive. After installing, the boot options remained untouched.

Anyway, system's running at automated repair thing now and I'm stuck waiting on an fsck. I'll try your suggestion when it finishes. Thanks!

There are loads of tips in the last link of my signature.

If you know which partition Suse is residing you can boot it now manually with Kubuntu's Grub because by pressing "c" key at the booting Kubuntu's Grub screen you get a Grub prompt, which Suse's version conceals.

Say your Suse is installed in the 5th partition (or the partition where /boot is held) it will boot in a Grub prompt by command
To make it boot automatically in Kubuntu you just edit the Kubuntu's /boot/grub/menu.lst with the addition of the above manual command prefixing it first with a title line indicating the name of the distro, something like
Adjust the partition number to suit your circumstance. If you still have a problem post here the output of
The above work for any distro that has Grub!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

edit: didn't see latest post

pulled up the openSUSE boot menu but I couldn't load anything--I got "Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition." :confused:

Here is the result of fdisk -l:

sda is the openSUSE installation, sdc is Kubuntu.

Let's be frank about this.

With Kubuntu's Grub pressing the "c" key at the Grub screen can drop you into a Grub prompt.

In a Grub prompt there is no installed Dos, Windows, Linux, BSD, Darwin and Solaris that cannot be booted manually!!!!!!!!!!!

The manual instruction you boot in a Grub prompt is the commands you need in menu.lst, with the exception "title" statement is needed in menu.lst.

Suse's menu.lst has a "gfxmenu" statement that coneals the Grub prompt. You can claim Grub prompt back by disabling the gfxmenu statement by putting a "#" in front of it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In your case with sda, sdb & sdc

You may have told the bios to boot the disk in an order at variant with sda, sdb and sdc. So the right thing to do is to ask Grub to tell you what it sees, by Grub prompt command
From the above you will find out if (hd0) is sda or not, or asking Grub to tell you which partition/disk has menu.lst
Having find the two partitions, which should be Suse and Kubunu, then you can boot either of them with the manual commands already given to you.

If you have a problem then post the 3 geometry statements output here. You can activate a Grub shell in Linux to issue the same 3 goemetry statements to post their output here. The command in a Linux root console is simply
A Grub prompt is the Grub at a state "before" an operating system is booted.

A Grub shell is Grub you obtain "after" a Linux has been booted. You can't use a Grub shell to boot a system but Grub is available to carry out various tasks.

Ok, I figured it out. Or I fixed it anyway. GRUB was using the menu from hd2, I did
which, I guess, set it to use the drive I wanted. Also, openSUSE and the boot manager in yast was using hd1 instead of hd0 when creating the menu.lst for some reason.

Everything seems to be working OK now. Thanks!

Yast is a nice hardware handling program in Suse. No other Linux use Yast. Its boot loader is still Grub.

The Grub commands in your post #8 means you told Grub to "source" its Grub file from the 1st partition of the 1st disk or (hd0,0), as Grub counts from zero, and install itself in the whole of the 1st disk (hd0) which is the MBR.

It pays to understand the command if you multi-boot. In multi-boot you just boot to a partition as far as a Linux boot loader is concerned.