I've been using grub in ubuntu as my main bootloader and I now want to change to the suse's bootloader cos it looks nice.

My os's go like this -
hda1 - ubuntu breezy
hda5 - ubuntu dapper
hda6 - Fedora Core 4
hdb1 - Windows XP
hdb5 - Suse

ubuntu's grub is installed on the mbr of disk 1 (/dev/hda)

In ubuntu's grub I use rootnoverify (hdx,x) chainloader +1 to boot all the other os's (so I don't have to keep updating it whenever a kernel is updated on one of the others) and set the bootloaders in the other os's to boot from their own partition.

Now, with the suse bootloader setup in the same way it's not booting anything except itself, which points the the actual kernel.
I'm thinking it may be something to do with suse being on the second disk, though grub is installed on the first disk's mbr.

Can anyone shed any light on this? I've tried all sorts of different combinations but it will only boot the others if I point grub the kernels

"Now, with the suse bootloader setup in the same way it's not booting anything except itself, which points the the actual kernel."

Could you post /boot/grub/menu.lst of your SuSE system?

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Steve Stites

It would be helpful to see the suse /boot/grub/menu.lst, and suse /etc/fstab. A simple typo is all it takes to cripple it. You might also include the Ubuntu grub.conf and fstab for comparison.

Basically, grub is grub. Shouldn't work differently on one distro than on another, unless they're different versions.

Sorry, I had every intention of posting my suse menu.lst as I was typing but I must have been distracted.
The matter has just been resolved. I've had problems with various config files I've altered being overwritten in suse and it seems this was the case again. Suse sets up the chainloader entries like this chainloader (hdx,x) +1 which wasn't working and each time I altered menu.lst, upon reboot the chainloader entries wre being reset.
Well I don't know what I've done differently but the changes have stuck now and all os's are booting fine.

Look chainloading only works if there is a boot loader in each root partition you want to multi-boot.

So the solution is dead simple. Just boot into any Linux and replicate its boot loader in its root partition.

As an example if you want to replicate Linux's boot loader in hda7 "when" you are inside that Linux and has the root privilege, just type

lilo -b /dev/hda7 <----------if Lilo is used
grub-install /dev/hda7 <----------if Grub is used

It is a piece of cake because my Suse is booting 50+ systems this way.

Ubuntu, Fedora and Suse are Grub believers but the above can be applied to any Linux.

DOS, Windows, XP, BSD or Solaris when installed will have the boot loader "automatically" inside the root partition. The reason is that these buggers cannot live without being installed in a bootable primary partition.