A while back I attempted to step out of the windows world and try out Linux, so installed Debian along side windows XP. The install was pretty easy and I had no issues. I became sidetracked with other projects but now want to give linux another go.
I have a Gateway LT20 netbook with windows7. First I put KNOPPIX_V6.7.1 on an SD card so I could "try before I buy" if you will. I researched a few other distros and came across openSUSE which really looked interesting. I put openSUSE-12.1-KDE-Live on another SD card and checked it out.
Since I had dual booted Debian and XP so easily before I thought (foolishly) that I could put 3 OSes on my netbook. First to be installed was SUSE. Well after the install I rebooted and Win7 loaded as usual. No bootloader....nothing. However, when I put the SUSE live card back in and booted from there, my HD installed SUSE would load.
I had read that SUSE uses Yast, and thought that when I installed Knoppix that grub would overwrite whatever SUSE had installed and all would be right with the world. GRUB shows :
The 2nd windows entry simply points to root=(hda1,0)
which is my SD card slot. SO, great, I can load SUSE from F12 or my messed up GRUB entry whilst the SD card is in the slot
I guess my questions are:
a) Which OSes bootloader should handle the booting?
b) How do I modify the bootloader files so that all 3 OSes show?
c) How do I deactivate the bootloader I don't want to use?
d) How do I uninstall 1 or both distros and restore the windows bootloader If I need/want to?
Here is what I get with fdisk -l
Code:
Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 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: 0x49427e30
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1567 12586896 27 Unknown
/dev/sda2 * 1568 1580 104422+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 3045 30402 219746630 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 1581 3044 11758592 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 1581 1770 1524736 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 1771 2424 5244928 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 2424 3044 4985856 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order
Disk /dev/sdb: 1017 MB, 1017643008 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 123 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: 0x0f768eec
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 124 993760+ b W95 FAT32
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(122, 254, 63) logical=(123, 183, 60)
PHEW! Sorry for the overload and thanks in advance.