MEPISThis forum is for the discussion of MEPIS Linux.
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I just installed mepis 6.0.1 and the first restart didn't show boot option for my other distro (Ubuntu) which is on another partitiion. During installation a msg said I can manually add the other boot options. How is this done?
Distribution: Arch Linux (kernel 2.6.19). I also like these two livecds: Slax and DSL
Posts: 28
Rep:
You edit as root the /boot/grub/menu.lst
You can clearly identify the mepis lines there as similar to these:
# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda5 vga=773 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
You need to find out the path for your ubuntu kernel and adjust accordingly. Note the root=/dev/XdaX section which should tell what partition ubuntu is on. Read more about it on the gnu pages or ubuntuwiki
I had a similar situation when I installed about a week ago. I have two versions of SuSE on this system and a partition for experimenting. Kubuntu (64bit) installed and put gloriousley detailed entries into the grub menu for all three partitions. I was delighted to see the Mepis AMD64 so I replaced Kubuntu. When I copied the exact stanzas for the other two partitions into the menu.lst, they didn't work! Any comments?
Puzzled..
Did you forget to uncheck the install grub for MEPIS and WINDOWS check box, If not I recommend that you reinstall MEPIS with that check box unchecke, and post your results back here.
Did you forget to uncheck the install grub for MEPIS and WINDOWS check box, If not I recommend that you reinstall MEPIS with that check box unchecke, and post your results back here.
Haven't tried the check box yet but it sounds like what happened.
Also according to Gnoteb's earlier post I can't edit grub/menu.lst cuz I'm locked out by root.
I'll fool with all this later. I use ubuntu mostly,now.
Haven't tried the check box yet but it sounds like what happened.
Also according to Gnoteb's earlier post I can't edit grub/menu.lst cuz I'm locked out by root.
I'll fool with all this later. I use ubuntu mostly,now.
Thanks
One BIG difference between Meois and Ubuntu is that Mepis permits Root and you can use SU to gain full root privileges in a console window. You can also use file managers and editors with full root privileges. You can easily destroy your system, too, so be forwarned.
I'll try reinstalling with the windows box unchecked. I always use the default on that one; in my other system with several partitions of Mepis, WONDERS is also present.
One BIG difference between Meois and Ubuntu is that Mepis permits Root and you can use SU to gain full root privileges in a console window. You can also use file managers and editors with full root privileges. You can easily destroy your system, too, so be forwarned.
I'll try reinstalling with the windows box unchecked. I always use the default on that one; in my other system with several partitions of Mepis, WONDERS is also present.
We.. I reinstlled it four or five time and never saw the check box. (I have bad etesight). I remember seeing iton the first install, and lef it UNchecked. The grub menu (.booy/grub/menu.lst)offers a choice of three kernels (newest, older, and 206.15-27-desktop64-smp)and the usual MEMTEST.
The last time I tried the older kernel choice the boot failed. Is there any reson to keep it and iys associared kernel file?
I don't know what "newest" is but assume it has something to do with beta testing.
I'll try again to make entries for the other partitions to try to boot into them. My data is there, and Mepis found them and put entries in /etc/fstab so I have no trouble accessing and maintainng the data. I put links in my home directory for that and share them via samba. But I sure would feel better if I could boot into those two partitions if need be! Is it possible that the commands that grub understands could have changed since SuSE 10.0 was released, making obsolete some of the syntax used in the menu.lst that belongs to SuSE? Is that even arelevant question?
Al
One BIG difference between Meois and Ubuntu is that Mepis permits Root and you can use SU to gain full root privileges in a console window. You can also use file managers and editors with full root privileges. You can easily destroy your system, too, so be forwarned.
WONDERS is also present.
Yeah, this has annoyed my with Ubuntu. Why does everyone tell me to go and edit my system files when Ubuntu won't allow that at all? This is a question that has never been resolved.
Also, I kind of know what you mean by destroying a system, I must be very careful. I deleted a loopback from the etc/hosts file via the network setup GUI and lost the system root when I first installed Ubuntu.
You can edit your system files in Ubuntu. You just can't su to become root or log in as root with Ubuntu installed out of the box.
For example, to edit menu.lst:
cd /boot/grub
sudo cp menu.lst menu.lst.bk1
sudo gedit menu.lst
The first time you execute sudo, you will be prompted for your password. The second time, if you don't wait too long, you won't have to enter your password. Gedit will open menu.lst, and you can edit.
If this doesn't work, then you may be a user without sudo privileges. Ubuntu gives the first user created sudo privileges. If that user creates another user, the privileges may not include administrative capabilities. The solution is to get a user with those privileges (like the first user) to change the privileges for you.
I'm no grub expert, but you don't need to be to get things working. If you installed MEPIS and want to be able to boot your other linux installations, there are some things you can do. The objective is to create the entries in /boot/grub/menu.lst (in your new MEPIS installation) that are needed for the the other installations to boot as gnoteb suggested.
If, prior to installing MEPIS, your other linux OS installed grub, then you can probably copy the necessary lines out of menu.lst in that installation. So if I had been using Ubuntu previously, I would mount the partition including /boot for Ubuntu and in a console execute less to list menu.lst. In MEPIS, as root,
mkdir /media/Ubuntu
mount /dev/hd?? /media/Ubuntu
less /media/Ubuntu/boot/grub/menu.lst
Then copy and paste the lines you need into menu.lst in MEPIS. If MEPIS mounted the partition for you, skip the mkdir and mount steps. (Don't use the lines above as typed; they are an example.)
If you don't have a previously-working menu.lst to copy lines from, you can try the super grub disk (search for it). This disk is bootable and will help you to search for bootable installations and even let you boot them. If you work at it a bit, you can get the info you need to edit menu.lst in MEPIS. The web pages are helpful and interesting, too.
Finally, you can use grub capabilities for editing, searching and command line completion to find your bootable installations and figure it all out yourself. You probably need to do some reading up on grub to be able to do this.
When I eted the Mepis menu.lst by adding the appropriate stanzas for the other two partitions I had made a mistake and copied inappropriate stanzas (for systems no longer present!). Naturally, grub failed. The origin of this mistake is my poor eyesiht; when I repeated the exercise properly today, I now have a fully functional boot that includes all partitions. Sorry about the false alarm!
I like Mepis; it uses the Ubuntu repositories without restricting root. Thus I can use the familiar GUI tools; I would make far more mistakes being limited to sudo.
As usual, most problems originate in the cockpit!!
You can edit your system files in Ubuntu. You just can't su to become root or log in as root with Ubuntu installed out of the box.
For example, to edit menu.lst:
cd /boot/grub
sudo cp menu.lst menu.lst.bk1
sudo gedit menu.lst
OK, the above commands worked! This is the first time since using Ubuntu I have been able to edit these files via gedit. After getting multi boots back I needed to change the name of one of the distros(Linux mint) which I did successfully. However I still have a duplicate entry for Ubuntu showing different kernal versions. Two showing are 2.6.15.26 & 27. The 28 for some reason doesn't show. I deleted all but 27 but both are still there. I tried to resolve this by looking at grub man but still couldn't get the delete to work.
I'm glad you are able to edit menu.lst in Ubuntu now. It isn't clear to me what you are trying to accomplish at this point. The portion of menu.lst that you included looks fine to me. Normally, it would be set up to boot to the latest kernal and the other entries are there in case you want to boot to an older kernal. You can just leave them alone.
Updates generally will add newer kernals to the top of the list, without you taking action. If the list of kernals gets too long, you can edit menu.lst and just remove the entries at the bottom. This does leave the old kernal code hanging around and taking up space. It is rarely a problem for me, since I tend to do clean installs fairly often.
If you are in a multi-boot situation, like with Ubuntu and MEPIS, then menu.lst will not get updated when a new kernal is added to the second OS installation. So if the menu.lst in use is in Ubuntu and I update to a new kernal for MEPIS, I would have to manually add the new MEPIS kernal to the list in menu.lst. This isn't very hard.
Possibly you have tried to remove old kernals and then expected to see the entries dissappear from menu.lst. If this is the case, just edit and delete the (now invalid) entries for missing kernals from menu.lst.
As I said initially, it isn't clear to me what you are trying to achieve now or exactly what you are doing.
Possibly you have tried to remove old kernals and then expected to see the entries dissappear from menu.lst. If this is the case, just edit and delete the (now invalid) entries for missing kernals from menu.lst.
As I said initially, it isn't clear to me what you are trying to achieve now or exactly what you are doing.
Mepis problem w/ multi boot is OK. I'm now talking about the double entry
in Ubuntu.
Three different version upgrades and only two are showing at start up. The versions are .28 - .27. - .26, and only .27 & .26 show upon boot up.
However, I chose to boot using .27 because .28 (the latest upgrade), for some reason, did'nt show at start up. So the grub/menu.lst file now shows only .27 after I deleted the other two.
So now I have a menu.lst file that has only .27, and a boot menu a start up that shows .26 and .27. So I can edit and save the file, but it did'nt work. See below.
I think you are editing the wrong menu.lst file. Since you are multiboot, only one of your installations contains the menu.lst file that is being used. The others generally just sit there.
Your test where you added the extra "a" to Ubuntu proves that the menu.lst file that you are editing is not the one being used. Perhaps the menu.lst file in MEPIS is the one you should be editing? You wouldn't be the first person to get confused like this. I probably have done it.
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