How do I add another distro?
 

I installed Linux Mint last week, leaving some space at the end of the hard drive for a second distro. Normally this would cause me no issues but Mint uses Grub2 and doesn't give a menu screen at start up.

I have googled this but am still confused.

If I install the second distro on the partition reserved for it, do I

either then install that distro's grub in root of that partition and run the command update-grub in Mint or

don't install grub for the second distro and run update-grub in Mint?

My partition table is:

hda1 / for Mint ext4
hda5 swap
hda6 /home for Mint ext4
hda7 spare partition

The simplest thing to do is probably to install grub along with your new installation into the partition you are installing it in (hda7).

Then you will need to add a chainload command into menu.lst in your linux mint installation.



Alternatively you could install your new grub into the MBR when you install your new distro, and hope it will find your linux mint installation. Even if it doesn't find it you can always fix that later.

Personally, if your new distro uses Grub2 i'd go for the first option, if it uses grub1 go for the latter.


(note -its not because mint uses grub2 that you don't have a menu on startup, it's just because grub doesn't see anything to choose from, so it's not showing you a menu.)

My opinion install GRUB of you're new distro on his OWN root directory and runs sudo update-grub in MINT
If you're second distro is also using GRUB 2 you also can write it on the MBR of you're drive
I know MINT is a fork of UBUNTU but as a example UBUNTU 9.10 also uses GRUB 2 and in my case it find all my distros

The reason for my question is that I have read on another forum that grub2 doesn't require a chainloader to boot other distros once they are detected. Also there is no menu.lst file in grub2 to edit.

There seems to be some degree of confusion and inconclusive discussion of this topic, so I wondered if anyone had a tried and tested method.

@spoovy
I have had only one distro on my PC before (e.g. Mandriva) but have always had a menu screen. This is the first time I've had grub2 so I assumed there was a connection.

What is you're point .
Both GRUB 1 and GRUB 2 normally detect all you're OS
IF fore some reason you have to add a distro in the menu.lst from grub 1 or grub.cfg for grub 2 the way to do it is different

Sorry, I thought my point was clear. Do I add grub to the root directory of the second distro or does grub2 not require this?

I have read that a separate boot partition solves this. I haven't tried it since I don't dual or triple boot. But keeping a boot partition separate from "/" and "/home" seems to allow easy selection of an OS at boot.

-Robin

which should be the default option.

it won't matter whether the new O/S use grub2 or grub1, - it should find the previous O/Ss