I am trying to install KUbuntu 9.04, Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha and Ubuntu 9.10 NBR on a flash drive. I tried installing all the three similar to the way we install it on HDD thinking the new installation would detect the old installation and would configure grub atuomatically! But it did not happen!

Every new installation forgot the old installation. Now I have the USB with all the 3 Kernels on 3 differnet partitions however I can only boot into one.

Questions
1. Where did I go wrong?
2. If at all I install Grub manually, will it detect all these three instalations? Well, I do not know yet how to manually install grub but will figure it out if you folks think that's the only way. I also won't mind installing all the OSs again.

here is how my partitions are (on the flash drive)

6.93GB (FAT32) - Kubuntu 9.04
5.91GB (EXT3) - Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha
5.89GB (EXT4) - Ubuntu 9.10 NBR
11.13GB - Storage (somehow not visible from windows)

Please help.

Never tried before but

I think the problem is that you need all of the ditros to share the /boot partition. All of your kernels should be there so that they can be 'found' from the grub menu.


re-do your partitions so that there is a 200mb ext3 ( i like ext3 but you can use others) partition for grub to live on with all of the kernels

200 MB (ext3/FAT) - boot
6.xx GB (FAT32) - Kubuntu 9.04
5.xx GB (EXT3) - Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha
5.xx GB (EXT4) - Ubuntu 9.10 NBR

hmmm ... let me try this out ...

another question though. while installing linux on HDD, the installer detects if you already have any other installation and keeps all the installations - installs boot loader accordingly. why wouldn't it do that if I am installing on Flash drive?