How to use grub to boot the triple OS: windows,linux,solaris?

chuanweizuo · 03-07-2005, 10:25 AM

Dear All

I intend to install Solaris 10, but I prefer making sure that every step will go well to rescuing a boot failure OS.

I've just looked through this forum, and i'm afraid such a bootloader problem might happen:
after installed Solaris, Linux may failed to boot using the default Solaris boot loader.

So I'm just wondering whether we can use grub to boot the mutiple OS or not.
Can anyone tell if my idea can be practicable? If so, how?

Regards
chuanweizuo

keefaz · 03-07-2005, 06:18 PM

For my part I did install Solaris letting it overwrite the drive boot sector, then
I booted from a Linux rescue CD (slackware 2nd CD)
I mounted my Linux root partition in /mnt/hd, then I used
chroot /mnt/hd
to change root to my Linux root partition and I reinstalled grub with

Code:

grub
grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)

As you can see my drive is hda and my /boot partition is /dev/hda1
Then I rebooted in Slackware-linux and I edited the grub.conf (or menu.lst)

Code:

title solaris 10
        rootnoverify (hd0,1)
        chainloader +1
        makeactive
        boot

(I installed Solaris in /dev/hda2)

eutu · 03-17-2005, 07:22 PM

can you install solaris 10 without using its bootloader then reconfigure the grub bootloader.

keefaz · 03-18-2005, 08:00 AM

I don't think so, I did not even try it though.
But the steps above work fine to use multiboot for Solaris and Linux
I did it twice (I re-installed Solaris to give it more space) and each time it worked
without a problem

jlliagre · 03-18-2005, 10:17 AM

I confirm there's no option to prevent the Solaris installer to overwrite the MBR with its own boot loader.

jlliagre · 09-21-2006, 08:11 PM

Update:

The way this thread explains how to boot Solaris is obsolete since Solaris Express 7/05 and Solaris 10 1/06.

Enhancements to grub allow it to natively boot the O/S, i.e. without chainloading.

pavan.tc · 09-22-2006, 06:10 AM

Two issues here :

If you have to boot the older solaris 10 (before Solaris 10 1/06 - without the GRUB), you can do so by chainloading. But, as remarked before, it will overwrite the MBR. You can reinstall the linux grub on the MBR to get back your original configuration.

If you have linux grub in the MBR, you still need to chainload, since linux grub cannot read ufs, which is the FS that solaris uses.
Solaris grub is installed within the partition on which solaris is installed. So, you can chainload into it like you do with windows, but in this case, you will see yet another grub menu (the solaris grub - which can read ufs), and you can boot into solaris from its menu.