correcting bootloader

keimasi · 03-23-2011, 12:45 PM

Hi friends

I just Install fedora 14 on my laptop. when i restart it i cant see my other os (ubuntu) and it directly load fedora and i cant choose them,

if u can please guide me

thanks

corp769 · 03-23-2011, 01:07 PM

How did you install grub? You should be able to reinstall grub as root and reconfigure it.

andrewthomas · 03-23-2011, 01:09 PM

Fedora's grub will not pick up ubuntu. You should have installed the fedora grub to the partition and let ubuntu take care of the MBR.

syg00 · 03-23-2011, 01:11 PM

No,it's just Fedoras lame defaults. When you reboot, just after the POST (hardware) messages, the screen will go blank - hit <Esc> and you should see the boot menu.
When you are in Fedora, run this from a terminal, and post the output

Code:

su -c 'grep -Ei "timeout|hidden" /boot/grub/grub.conf'

keimasi · 03-23-2011, 01:13 PM

i must use this?

Code:

grub-install /dev/hda

syg00 · 03-23-2011, 01:38 PM

Try what I suggested before you start (re-)installing.

keimasi · 03-23-2011, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

No,it's just Fedoras lame defaults. When you reboot, just after the POST (hardware) messages, the screen will go blank - hit <Esc> and you should see the boot menu.
When you are in Fedora, run this from a terminal, and post the output

Code:

su -c 'grep -Ei "timeout|hidden" /boot/grub/grub.conf'

Code:

# su -c 'grep -Ei "timeout|hidden" /boot/grub/grub.conf'
timeout=0
hiddenmenu

syg00 · 03-23-2011, 01:46 PM

As root edit that file and change the timeout to say 5 (seconds) - personally I'd also comment out the hiddenmenu; just add a # character at the start of the line. That is up to you after you see the effect of the first change.

DavidMcCann · 03-23-2011, 01:48 PM

You just need to add Ubuntu to Fedora's grub.conf

Open a terminal, enter
su -c "gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf"
and add to the end of the file

title Ubuntu
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/sda1
initrd /boot/initrd.img

This example assumes you have Ubuntu on the first partition (sda1) which grub calls (hd0,0). Alter that if it isn't there. Also, look at Ubuntu's /boot directory and check that vmlinuz and initrd haven't been given long names like "vmlinuz-2.6.32".

You also need to alter the entry timeout=0 to timeout=5 and delete "hiddenmenu".

Fedora only add Windows automatically: they can't believe that any one with Fedora would want any other Linux!

andrewthomas · 03-23-2011, 07:32 PM

I only suggested that he reinstall grub to the partition because: when he had only ubuntu installed that had control of the MBR and it still believes it does.

When Fedora was installed, then it also installed to the MBR.

One solution is to have grub2 installed in one of the installs and not have any grub installed in the other install, just a /boot/grub/menu.lst file with correct entries in it for grub2 to pick up.

Although this does make it necessary to manually update the menu.lst with each kernel upgrade or at least update some symlinks pointing to the latest kernel and image.

As an alternative, one can install the secondary grub to the partition boot record and then the menu.lst will get automatically updated. The drawback of this option is that you have to boot the primary os and update-grub. Although this can be overcome by adding an entry in the primary grub's configuration pointing to the symlinks in the secondary. This is basically what post # is referring to. Ubuntu automatically updates symlinks with each kernel update ( although I believe that they are in / and not /boot but I am not sure)