I have several distros that are setup to chainload in Grub. Slight problem.

What has happened is that the distros will not load from the entry in the Grub when I log in. Instead there is one distro that itself will not load but all the other chainload distros will load if I click on that one first. It then displays a set of distros that are to be chainloaded and when I click on the one I want there, except for the one that starts it, the distro will load.

Example: I have Pardus, Fedora, Sabayon, OpenSUSE and Mandriva all set to chainload. There are entries for all of them in the grub menu. To start them I have to click on Mandriva which then displays all the chainloaded distros. At that point I can then load Pardus, Fedora, Sabayon or OpenSUSE by clicking on the Mandriva menu. What I cannot load is Mandriva.

The entry for all of them in the Grub Menu List is in this pattern:

title Pardus 2008 (on /dev/sda2)
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1


Any ideas on what could cause this one? I just find it very strange. I can work with it but why should I if there is a way to fix it. Besides I would like to use Mandriva again to see if my initial reactions to it were right.

Is that the latest Mandriva? If so, they've gone with a different "inode" (whatever that is) to the other distros, so it won't chainload off grub, but you need to let it have the MBR and chainload your other distros off it. (I may not have explained that properly, but it's discussed here)

http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic....208&highlight=

I can see now what Mandriva is doing and it may be the wave of the future for Grub. That said, this is enough to put me totally off Mandriva. One of the benefits of Linux is that it is relatively easy to try the new releases of the various distros without losing what you have by just chainloading the new distro while you are checking it out. Since Mandriva has seen fit to make that an impossibility, then the choice becomes do I go ahead and screw up my Grub by letting Mandriva take over the whole thing before I decide if I even want it on the computer or do I just forget about Mandriva. My solution is to just forget about Mandriva and stick with the ones I already have.

I find it even more frustrating that Mandriva has seen fit to make their own previous version incapable of booting their new version. The logic behind that totally escapes me. I guess it will be Kubuntu for me for now and I will have to work some other deals with my current chainloaded distros. Mandriva will just go to the trash heap no matter how good it may be. I wonder how many others will make the same decision.

You aren't alone, as you can see from the other thread. It certainly put me off for the same reasons you express. When I finally figured out the chainloading thing, it was annoying to think that I'd have to let Mandriva take over the MBR (they never pick up all of my distros, either, so I have to fiddle with the menu.lst). And then you have to reinstall grub - which I don't know how to do - if you decide to give Mandriva the flick. It's not an issue if you just want to install only Mandriva, but for all of the undecided distro-hoppers/distro-curious, it is off-putting, I think.

To be fair, the (ext3) inode change wasn't Mandrivas fault -blame the ext4 devs. Everyone will have to hack the loaders to get this to co-exist with previously formatted ext3 partitions.
This will affect everyone eventually - I had similar failures with Fedora 9.

However, not allowing the user to decide which (if any) boot-loader to use is a cock-up the distro devs have to accept. Not documenting it prominently, more so.

I'll take your word for it syg00 - as I have no idea what you are talking about, I'll have to

I think it is disappointing for Mandriva because it seemed to me that it is promoted to newbies as a complete distro. Speaking for myself, newbies can be easily deterred when "it doesn't work" or "I can't figure it out"- you just give up. Fedora 9 is supposed to be "cutting edge", Mandriva not so much.....