Unscrambling multiple Grub boot setups
 

I have several different distros on this machine, all of which would boot quite happily using one menu.lst - which happened to be on hdb3.

Then I installed SuSe 10.1 - and that created its own menu.lst on hdc3. It also changed the "boot-up" menu.lst to the version on hdc3. Unfortunately, that menu.lst only contained SuSe and WinXP. I edited it to include all the other distros on the machine, whereupon it refuses to boot anything other than WinXP. Choosing any Linux version results in a Grub error.

I copied the same edited menu.lst to hdb3. If at the Grub error I type configfile (hd1,2)/boot/grub/menu.lst then it brings up the same list - which now works.

Can anyone advise me what extra bits a SuSe menu.lst needs to make it work, or alternatively how I can tell grub to use the menu.lst on hdb3 instead of the one on hdc3 - or indeed, anywhere else?

I've googled extensively and found many instructions on how to write a menu.lst but none on how to change the location of the boot-up menu.lst.

Try running grub then setup. Afterward you'll need to add the other stanzas in the file /boot/grub/menu.lst.

Thanks!

Meanwhile, having failed utterly to find how to tell Grub to look in a different location for its menu.lst, I compared the "template" that Yast provided with the final menu.lst.

That showed some syntax differences between Debian/Fedora/Ubuntu/Knoppix style of Grub, and SuSe. I removed the "setdefault" and "boot" lines, and it now works, with Grub booting from hdc3.

Works!

Now all I have to do is to install the rest of the software I use, and I can compare SuSe with the others.

If you want to review several distros at once I would recommend running VMWare instead. They released the new open source version last month.