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Old 08-21-2008, 03:45 PM   #1
GTrax
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Is there something new about Multi-booting?


Hi LQ folks

I have several partitions, each containing a different distro (Yes - I try them out!)

I have kept the same Grub boot-loader for more than a year.
Whenever I try out a new distro, I always choose not to install a new GRUB. Instead, I just add the correct filename and partition for that distro's kernel to the /boot/grub/menu.lst that the existing GRUB uses.

Twice recently, this has failed with the message about "wrong filename or filesystem type".

I also notice that some no longer refer to my EIDE drive as "hda" and the SATA drive as "sda". Instead, all drives are "sda, sdb, sdc", etc. Things get very tangled with Ubuntu and Debian installs because now, the drives are listed as "UUID_and_a_very_long_number_that_is_hard_to_use"
The /etc/fstab is no longer a clean and easy thing.

So am I doing something wrong? Have I been out in the country too long, and the rules have changed? I do not trust every passing distro to make its own version of a GRUB boot from "detecting" the existing systems, and I would like to keep on multibooting.

Thanks for any suggestions.
 
Old 08-21-2008, 04:06 PM   #2
RAFAL
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Location: Warsaw, Poland
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GTrax View Post
Hi LQ folks

I have several partitions, each containing a different distro (Yes - I try them out!)

(...)

Thanks for any suggestions.
My suggestion for you:
Keep 1-2 systems on your hard drive (I have currently 2 but used to have 3-4), and the rest test in VMware ;-) , which is for free (VMware Server).
You even don't have to install them because there are some images in the Internet.
In that way you keep everything clean. Each system exists only in virtual disk and you can even copy them or use on several computers (like I do: I use some systems for work and the same at home)

by the way: my Suse 11 with GRUB detects hard drive partition as sda

regerds
Rafal
 
Old 08-21-2008, 04:08 PM   #3
jailbait
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When you install a distribution the installer identifies all of the hardware and sets up the new kernel to support the hardware you have available. Some distributions have gone to trying to support both IDE drives and SATA drives as SATA drives. This sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. I have had personal experience with a Ubuntu distribution which would not work because it called my IDE drives (/dev/hda, etc.) as SATA drives (/dev/sda, etc.)

In order to keep Grub straight I recommend that you try using the Grub relative addressing scheme for every hard drive address in menu.lst. For example, hda1 is called hd0,0 by Grub.

The long term solution is for the distributions to give up on their attempt to support IDE as SATA. It doesn't always work.

-------------------
Steve Stites
 
Old 08-21-2008, 05:07 PM   #4
syg00
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GTrax View Post
So am I doing something wrong? Have I been out in the country too long, and the rules have changed?
Yep.
Like it or not you're going to have to keep an eye on the changelogs for the various distros you use. Including the releases you skip - or fix things after they break.
The IDE/SATA thing was a while back now - a libata change in the kernel; distros will have to move to it. As with the change to udev - some just insisted on using devfs even after being warned. Eventually all the old code will drop out of the mainline kernel.
Quote:
I do not trust every passing distro to make its own version of a GRUB boot from "detecting" the existing systems, and I would like to keep on multibooting.
As above. You only need to keep a copy of your menu.lst, just in case.
Recently there was a change to ext3 to accommodate the upcoming ext4 - grub needed patching to see the new distros ext3 partitions. Any unpatched grub fails to boot the new distros.
Guess how I found out about that one ....

The introduction of UUID (and LABEL by Fedora) was a response by the (distro) devs to the libata change - their way of coping with the name change.
You can still use the old /dev/sda? in fstab if you prefer. I find it works better where there is several systems and partitions maybe moving around.

Last edited by syg00; 08-21-2008 at 05:10 PM.
 
  


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