Hey! I've just spent 3 days installing, re-installing, and trying to get a multi-boot system going.

Now, in past years, it was easy. All I had to do was install grub (or lilo) to the super block of my / partition and use either a final grub install from the last distro, or more often simply use GAG and I was all set.

Lately, however, every single distro I've tried has gone amuck at installing the boot loader. I mean Mint, Slackware, Zenwalk, Ubunutu, Kubuntu, Vecto Linux, and a few others.

The install script is WAY behind the times, and buggy as hell.

Most of the time, the install won't accept my "install to super block of partition" and INSISTS on going to the MBR. It's driving me nuts. (yeah the choice is "there" but don't work right)

I KNOW, in years past that Slack and most of the other played nice and installed where I told it.

Anyway, specifically I was tring to install Slack on HD1 as I had Ubuntu on HD0 (or HDa and HDb as the case may be. (which is another gripe I have about how the distros can't seem to label the dang disks the same.

<rant over>

Man, I'd pay somebody to write a program that would force all these distros to use the same install parameters (if it's even possible

Usually operating system uses hda, hdb etc. marking, and GRUB (hd0), (hd1) etc. That could change in the future, but not really my headache right now..

In a multi-boot environment I would simply ask the distributions, if possible, leave bootloader uninstalled, and install it along the last one -- or even better, manually. Installing GRUB is pretty easy, as is installing LiLO (but the latter one is not for me). Not sure about GRUB 2, haven't tried since it's not "stable" or "ready" yet.

Don't ask the distributions to install any bootloader, instead after the multiple setups boot the machine with a boot floppy or live-cd or something, then install GRUB (or LiLo if you like) manually.

Well, thanks for the quick reply, Bouncer, as I had thought of that, too.

However, after installing Slack on HDb, booing from the Ubuntu live, and trying to install GRUB manually, none of the how-tos found on google worked. I mean it couldn't find *stage1, it wouldn't set-up and it wouldn't work for me at all. I was sudo and all the rest......

It's possible I overlooked a good how-to, but I tried about 5 before I gave up. Naturally, GRUB doesn't label the drives like you said, but I tried everything I know.

Can you spot me a good (working) tutorial for this? Or is it in the GRUB manual? (which I admit I haven't read yet). Is this my next step?

Thanks again.

The link below (booting) may be helpful--it includes links to some of saikee's material*--and to the GRUB manual.

*saikee is perhaps the #1 boot expert here.

You can also check out Here. The GRUB info is the same idea as Saikee's and Pixellany, but I have some other info about partitioning, etc.

Basically, you need to install GRUB and make each distro install its boot loader to its root partition. Then use the "master" GRUB install to chainload the other distros. I have not come across a distro that does not allow this yet, however it is often an "advanced" option. This method has a number of advantages, including the ability to upgrade the individual distros without modifying GRUB.

--Ian

Installing grub using a live-cd for example requires you, in addition to root privileges, to do the job in a chroot environment I think. Shortly said, if you just boot the livecd and run grub-install from it (if it is there, or from your mounted HD), it probably fails because you're running a live-cd and not the actual harddisk-installed Linux. After booting you should mount the harddisk partitions and other things mentioned in fstab, maybe even swapon if you like - chroot so it looks like if you were running the HD install and not a live-cd. Reading those links posted above is a good idea; probably it's easier to install GRUB during the initial setup of the distribution in hand, but it should work afterwards too.

Good how-tos are nowadays difficult to find. There are of course lots of them, and other documentation, but it seems most of it is partly irrelevant, incomplete or just misleading; I hope in the future LQ will collect a good amount of good HOWTO documents, all in one place (or some other site, but LQ would be nice because it already has a place for those, and a lot of other information as well).

Thanks for the links! I've skimmed them, and need to study it later today.

First off, I KNOW I multi-booted fine using about 5 distros years ago, simply by installing the boot loader to the / for each distro, except allowing GRUB on the last one to write to the MBR. It always worked, including using GAG. Something has changed in the installs. For example, for Slackware 12.0, every time I used "advanced" and had lilo install to /, it "couldn't install lilo" go back........

Some distros just hung up, too. (Zenwalk in particular, but this one also changed the drive designations like I was griping about).

I'm also having some problems with my video card (Radeon 9500 SE). Some will install, then freeze on boot, or go black. Ubuntu works fine on my card and USB wifi (Zydal chip), so it's just a matter of configuration on the rest, I suppose.

In any case, I'll tinker and find out what's up and use the links. These guys seem to know their stuff!

This is a hobby box for testing, so thanks for pointing me in the right direction to all of you!

(But I swear it was a snap about 4 years ago......I'm curious as to what has changed).

Wellll---we're all 4 years older... Plus GRUB may have gone from 0.95 to 0.97. Otherwise, not much.

Didn't find Grub or Lilo has changed to the point warrant a complaint myself.

I rarely find an installer able to install Lilo without error but that may be just me as I use the maximum partition number like hda63 and many Linux, especially Slackware family doesn't expect partition higher than hda32. But Lilo work OK if I expand the device names.

Never had a problem with Grub. Use it in DVDs and pen drives too.

The last link of my signature still work as I wrote it 19 months ago.

If OP has a booting problem supply the following information to let others fix it

(1) output of "fdisk -l"
(2) /boot/grub/menu.lst for Grub or /etc/lilo.conf for Lilo
(3) /etc/fstab
(4) /boot/grub/device.map ( Grub only)

Pixellany,

I feel embarrassed! There are many experts who know much more. You are among them.