I've noticed in Debian Testing (which I have dumped in favor of) and Kubuntu 9.10 that drives are assigned UUID's instead of the standard /dev/hd? or /dev/sd? (in Kubuntu). First. In Kubuntu, during boot, the splashscreen shows the drives being mounted, but it brings up a message that uuid-xxxx can not be mounted at this time. I have previously discovered that you can edit fstab and change the uuid's back to the /dev/sd? identifiers. And I have for all drives except /home, and this is the drive that this message comes up on. I don't really consider it an error since /home eventually does mount and the system loads like normal. But my first question is, is this a problem? Should I just go ahead and change /home's uuid back to the /dev/sd? identifier?

Also I am old school. I have used Lilo continuously until now. I would prefer to keep using it but can't find a way in Kubuntu to load lilo. Unless I do it now after install is done. (that's another issue I'll tackle later). But I'm, for the first time dealing with and learning Grub, so work with me here. I've found the grub.cfg that lists my boot options. And again I see the UUID's listed again. I have not changed these yet. Can I? I'm not totally sold on UUID's and would rather keep the /dev/sd? identifiers. Oh I originally changed the fstab identifiers because I got security updates after my install and it installed a newer kernel. But the kernel wouldn't boot until after I changed the UUID back to the /dev/sd? identifier in the fstab. It seemed to change. So I edited fstab and the new kernel booted fine. But I'm concerned to see the UUID's in grub.cfg. So can/should I edit these too. And then if I do how do I make the changes take affect? Is it grub-update? Remember basic question as I'm just learning grub. I'm debating loading lilo now though.

OK an update: The message at boot says "one of the files systems listed in fstab can not be booted at this time" and the next line is the uuid for the /home dir.

Now I did a little reading and it says that grub.cfg can't be edited that it gets its info from /etc/default/grub so I tried some edits there (removed the recovery modes as a test) and ran update-grub and rebooted. No change. So what's the deal? How do I change grub entries?

OK Ok so I goofed. My sudo password was misspelled. When i re did it I saw it run mkgrubconfig or something like that. Either way it took this time. And I removed the recovery modes and I also uncommented the lines to not use the UUID's. So the old /dev/sd?'s are listed in grub.cfg again.

For me it's fine but for the wife, she likes things clean (not a techie) so I'd like to just have the linux entries and windows so it goes
1. new linux kernel
2. windows
3. old linux kernel

and remove memtest. Since I can run it from the live cd I'd rather it not be in the boot menu. Gonna check on this unless someone can give me a quick answer fix.

Oh and to clarify, I don't want it to change the default boot order. I just want to change the listing order. I still want it to default boot Linux but I want to only have to click down once to get to windoze.

Yikes... I had the worst time finding your post. You responded to it this morning, it no longer shows up in the "zero reply threads"... But obviously I found it.

What you are facing is Grub2 (vs Legacy Grub). Most of the documentation that you run into is for Legacy Grub (0.95, 0.96, or 0.97). As you learned, Grub2 uses a suite of files to build its grub.cfg. Once you make changes to any of those /etc/grub.d/ config files you need to run /usr/sbin/update-grub, which is a shell around
which you alluded to ("mkgrubconfig or something like that").

I'm new to Grub2 (I recently installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix on an HP Mini), so I don't have a lot of experience. But you can remove the "20_memtest86+" file from /etc/grub.d, run update-grub will rebuild grub.conf, and viola no more memtest entry.

I don't know what happens when you put maintenance onto the system. Will the "20_memtest86+" file reappear at some point? Does the system retain your other changes? If no one else comments on this, post a short question on just this topic and someone with more experience with Grub2 will probably respond.

In reference to your experience with UUID's, they seem to be the wave of the future. It's usually easiest to go with what's popular with your distro. UUID in my experience works well.

Eh don't sweat it. It's a moot point now. I kept running into issues and when Kubuntu wouldn't print to my Officejet G85, even though it showed up as available, that was the last straw. I had gotten tired of Grub and instead loaded lilo. Had to futz with it to get it configured correctly. But Lilo I know back and forth so it wasn't hard. But when the printer wouldn't work that was it. I'm sticking with Debian Lenny until Squeeze at least goes freeze. I need a system that just WORKS. And I mean NEED it to work. I spent days tinkering with Kubuntu and it only took me an hour and a half to fully configure Lenny good. and another hour to mess with the menu and make it pretty.

But that is messed up. If they are going to put a new version in they NEED to update the documentation that goes with it. Geez.