Triple boot - Opensuse/Mandriva/Debian - can't boot into Mandriva or Debian
 

Hi everyone.This is my first post on these forums. I recently installed Opensuse 11.3 and I'm really enjoying using it.
I decided to also install Mandriva on the same drive, and that's where the problems started.
I installed the Mandriva boot loader to Mandriva's root partition. No entry for Mandriva would appear in Opensuse's bootloader so I tried editing the /boot/grub/menu.lst file but no change. I then added an entry for Mandriva to the bootloader using YAST. Now I have an entry but get this error message when I try to boot into Mandriva :Error 1: Filename must be either and absolute pathname or blocklist
Anyway, I also want to use Debian so I installed the latest release (5.0) and the same thing has happened again. I now have two distros I'm unable to boot into.
This is what I get from fdisk -l in the Terminal:

Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x18000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 262 2103296 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 262 2873 20972544 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 2873 25485 181630976 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 25486 91201 527863770 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 25486 27052 12586896 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 27053 27561 4088511 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 27562 49963 179938220 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 * 49964 90871 328593478+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 90872 91201 2650693+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

I installed Debian's bootloader on /dev/sda5

I know roughly what I need to do, which is edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst to make Mandriva and Debian show up, but I've tried various solutions and nothing has worked up to now.
Do I need to re-edit using YAST?

Thanks in advance.
Stephen

Yes you can edit the menu.lst in YaST. If you installed the grub to the root partition in Debian on sda5 your entry should look like this

title Debian
rootnoverify (hd0,4)
chainloader +1

title Mandrivia
rootnoverify (hd0,?)
chainloader +1

Replace the question mark with one number less than your root partition number for Mandrivia.

Thanks. I tried that and it's still not working. I have tried changing the partitions in the entry I added to YAST in case I was mistaken in where I put Mandriva and Debian bootloaders but still no success. There are now entries in GRUB but when I try to boot either Mandriva or Debian, I get this new error message:

rootnoverify (hd0,5)
chainloader +1

Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format

Press any key to continue

This is what my /boot/grub/menu.lst now looks like:

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Thu Sep 16 17:24:17 BST 2010
# THIS FILE WILL BE PARTIALLY OVERWRITTEN by perl-Bootloader
# Configure custom boot parameters for updated kernels in /etc/sysconfig/bootloader

default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/message
##YaST - activate

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.3 - 2.6.34.4-0.1
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34.4-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3750528AS_9VP7CV8A-part2 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3750528AS_9VP7CV8A-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.34.4-0.1-default

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.3 - 2.6.34.4-0.1
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34.4-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3750528AS_9VP7CV8A-part2 showopts apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 nomodeset x11failsafe vga=0x31a
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.34.4-0.1-default

title Debian
rootnoverify (hd0,5)
chainloader +1

title Mandriva
rootnoverify (hd0,5)
chainloader +1


I tried what you suggested (hd0,4) and then tried different partition numbers but still can't boot into Mandriva or Debian. Opensuse works fine.

You only need one swap partition for future reference, you've got a large drive so it shouldn't matter. Don't delete any of them now as it will mess up your partition numbering.

Possible Linux boot partitions are sda2, 3, 5, 7, 8 so try the entry suggested by Larry Webb changing the number for each attempt. Grub Legacy which Opensuse uses, counts from zero so your root entry in menu.lst should be one number lower that the sda?.

The entry Larry Webb suggested should have worked if the Debian bootloader is there? What happened when you tried it? error message?