Hi... I have a Dell XPS061 desktop with two 500gb hard drives (no RAID). On one drive, dev/hdb, I have Ubuntu 12.04 and Kubuntu 12.04 on separate partitions. On the other hard drive, dev/sda, I have an old OpenSuse install that hasn't worked for a long time. It was the first distribution I installed on this machine so that's why it's on dev/hda. I quit using it after a kernel update had problems with nVidia. By then I was mostly using Ubuntu anyway so when I couldn't figure out how to fix the problem I just let it sit there. After a while, it quit even showing up in the boot menu. But now I would like to do a fresh install of OpenSuse or possibly Mageia as I'd like to have an RPM option to get more familiar with that. So can I just do the install on dev/hda without causing problems? Should I install without installing the bootloader and trust that the bootloader on dev/sdb will pick it up? Or if I do install the bootloader will it pick up Ubuntu and Kubuntu automatically? I know Ubuntu/Kubuntu use Grub2 but I believe Mageia uses Grub, and I'm not sure about OpenSuse.

Since both drives are the same size, you will need to ascertain during the installation of either Mageia or Opensuse which is which, sda or sdb. They probably won't show as hda hdb on a newer distribution. I don't know about the Mageia bootloader, but the most recent Opensuse 12.2 I beleive is now using Grub2. Probably the easiest thing for you to do would be to install the bootloader for the new distribution to its partition rather than the mbr of either drive. Then you could just run update-grub from Ubuntu/Kubuntu, whichever you have on the mbr. It should detect the new install.

One thing about Opensuse is that there are a lot of different options when it comes to the bootloader installation so if you choose it, make sure you take a look at all options.

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Thanks for the reply... Just checked and Ubuntu/Kubuntu are on sdb, so I will put the new install on sda.

OldSmokey2, I have both Ubuntu and openSUSE installed on a couple of different computers here, along with a few other distros. I would like to know, after you install openSUSE, if openSUSE overwrites your grub. It did that here with both openSUSE 12.1 and 12.2, even though I was sure that I set things to install grub to openSUSE's root partition. I had to reinstall grub (in my case, Debian's grub) to the MBR each time.

Hmmm.. m.a.l.'s pa, that's the kind of thing that worries me. I've used Linux for several years but I'm not a techie. I admit I know next to nothing about partitioning and such. I have been reading some tutorials about Grub this evening and a lot of it goes over my head, but I'm trying to figure it out. Anyway, I've looked at my partition table and I don't have separate root partitions. On dev/sdb there is a swap partition and then a large partition for Ubuntu and a swap partition and large partition for Kubuntu. And on dev/sda there is a swap partition and large partition for the old OpenSuse install that doesn't boot anymore. I understand that that's because I have never created separate root and data partitions on previous installs. So here is my fear, that if I install a new distro on dev/sda the bios is going to look first for a bootloader on dev/sda and won't ever make it to dev/sdb. I wouldn't worry so much if it was dev/sdb that was available but that's not the way it is. Of course, I've learned a lot when I've screwed things up before so maybe I'll back everything up and see what happens.

Just install it and fix (learn) the problems that pop up. I'd be willing to bet you'll get your loader (in the MBR) overlaid, but shouldn't matter with grub2.
Avoid distros still on grub classic ...

To save any guessing by all of us go here, do as it says, post the RESULTS.txt, and all will be revealed (no personal stuff, just the boot config).

In Opensuse before the actual install begins, you should see a window Live Installation Settings. There is a section labelled Booting which has options to enable/disable boot from MBR and boot from partition. If you click on the Booting heading (green font) you will see another window which has two sections, Section Management and BootLoader Installation and there are several more options there.

If it does install its Grub to the mbr, it should still detect the other operating systems and boot them. If you prefer the Ubuntu/Kubuntu bootloader, just run sudo updaate-grub after booting either.

Yeah, I think you'll see how it all works once you get into it. I don't think you necessarily have to create a separate root partition -- I just like to have separate / and /home, by choice.

Looking over my installation notes, I'm pretty sure I followed the steps that yancek wrote about, but perhaps I missed something. It looked to me like openSUSE was set to install its grub to the openSUSE root partition, but the MBR was overwritten each time. Anyway, not to worry, I was able to boot into any distro, and it was easy enough to then reinstall Debian's grub to the MBR. Either way, you should be able to boot into each distro; in fact, I'm curious about why you can't boot into the old openSUSE.

Kinda looking forward to openSUSE 12.3, so I can take a look at this again.

Just to update, I've been pretty busy with classes this week but I had a little time to experiment with a four-year-old Dell Inspiron laptop I used to own, gave to a friend, then got back a couple weeks ago after he bought a new computer. I'm planning to fix it up again for another friend but I realized the other day that it's a great guinea pig at the moment for learning about Grub. I had already installed Ubuntu 12.04 on it, so the other night I installed Fedora 17 as well. I let it take over the boot screen. No problem. Then I booted into Ubuntu and let it run some fresh updates, including a kernel update and Grub update. Interestingly, it then took over the boot screen again but didn't list Fedora. So I did some searching and learned how to use Disk Utilty to activate the Fedora LVM volumes, mount those partitions and then run sudo update-grub. Bingo, Fedora showed up then in the boot menu. So I tried that tonight on my desktop but the old OpenSuse entry still doesn't show up in that computer's boot options, and, yes, m.a.l.'s pa, I'm curious about why it doesn't. I thought that would do it. So, yancek, what I'm going to try next is to run an OpenSuse install on the laptop and learn about the Live Installation Settings you mentioned that way. If I screw up on the laptop, so what; I can learn from that. And, syg00, since I'm going to try that first, I'll put off a fresh install of OpenSuse on the desktop Dell, but when I do, I'll follow those instructions and post the results. Thanks, everyone.