Right way to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst ?
 

Hello,

I have been busy writing stuff about a few debian-based distros and Linux in general for newbies, and now I have this question:

Is it all right to edit boot/grub/menu.lst in this way? I needed to have WindowsXp boot first and appear first on the menu at boot time (I installed Ubuntu on a laptop which is shared among several people and on which WindozeXP was pre-installed).

I simply cut the lines referring to WinXp and added by clever Ubuntu, and pasted them just above those eferrinfg to Ubuntu, and I adapted the title. Here's part of the edited file:

## ## End Default Options ##
title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title Other operating system: Linux Ubuntu

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.12-9-386
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-9-386 root=/dev/hda2 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.12-9-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.12-9-386 (recovery mode)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-9-386 root=/dev/hda2 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.12-9-386
boot

title Ubuntu, memtest86+
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
boot

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

I read somewhere you oughtn't to move lines but you should simply write defaut 0 or 1 according to where Windows stands in the file.

What do you say?

Many thanks in advance!

Do it either way. No harm done whatsover.

no change when I edited menu.lst
 

I believe I edited menu.lst the same way and there was no change when I rebooted. What is the problem? I went to the terminal and entered sudo getit /boot/grub/menu.lst and then my password.
Jim

I used this method with of course dates are different on my system.

## ## End Default Options ##
title Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title Other operating system: Linux Ubuntu

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.12-9-386
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-9-386 root=/dev/hda2 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.12-9-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.12-9-386 (recovery mode)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-9-386 root=/dev/hda2 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.12-9-386
boot

title Ubuntu, memtest86+
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
boot

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST