LinuxQuestions.org
Welcome to the most active Linux Forum on the web.
Go Back   LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Distributions > MEPIS
User Name
Password
MEPIS This forum is for the discussion of MEPIS Linux.

Notices


Reply
  Search this Thread
Old 01-18-2007, 09:52 PM   #1
klarsin
Member
 
Registered: Oct 2006
Distribution: Ubuntu / Mepis
Posts: 144

Rep: Reputation: 15
Grub only shows mepis boot option


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?

Last edited by klarsin; 01-18-2007 at 09:53 PM.
 
Old 01-19-2007, 12:20 AM   #2
gnoteb
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Aug 2005
Location: Oslo
Distribution: Arch Linux (kernel 2.6.19). I also like these two livecds: Slax and DSL
Posts: 28

Rep: Reputation: 15
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

Good luck
 
Old 02-17-2007, 06:28 PM   #3
Al Hawley
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Nov 2004
Location: Prescott, AZ
Distribution: FC3 , SuSE9.0, Suse9.1
Posts: 25

Rep: Reputation: 15
mepis 6.0-4 AMD54 Beta4

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..
 
Old 02-17-2007, 09:27 PM   #4
inspiron_Droid
Member
 
Registered: Dec 2006
Distribution: Debian (Wheeze)
Posts: 391

Rep: Reputation: Disabled
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.
 
Old 02-17-2007, 11:54 PM   #5
klarsin
Member
 
Registered: Oct 2006
Distribution: Ubuntu / Mepis
Posts: 144

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 15
Quote:
Originally Posted by badboy88
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.

Thanks
 
Old 02-18-2007, 10:28 AM   #6
Al Hawley
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Nov 2004
Location: Prescott, AZ
Distribution: FC3 , SuSE9.0, Suse9.1
Posts: 25

Rep: Reputation: 15
Talking Mepis' boot menu

Quote:
Originally Posted by klarsin
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.
 
Old 02-20-2007, 10:10 PM   #7
Al Hawley
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Nov 2004
Location: Prescott, AZ
Distribution: FC3 , SuSE9.0, Suse9.1
Posts: 25

Rep: Reputation: 15
Mepis' boot menu

Quote:
Originally Posted by Al Hawley
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
 
Old 02-20-2007, 10:12 PM   #8
klarsin
Member
 
Registered: Oct 2006
Distribution: Ubuntu / Mepis
Posts: 144

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 15
Quote:
Originally Posted by Al Hawley
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.
 
Old 02-22-2007, 02:23 PM   #9
redwing57
Member
 
Registered: Jan 2005
Location: Yorktown, VA
Distribution: CentOS, Ubuntu, MEPIS
Posts: 30

Rep: Reputation: 15
Ubuntu and system files

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.

Rob
 
Old 02-22-2007, 02:46 PM   #10
redwing57
Member
 
Registered: Jan 2005
Location: Yorktown, VA
Distribution: CentOS, Ubuntu, MEPIS
Posts: 30

Rep: Reputation: 15
Fixing up grub

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.

Rob
 
Old 02-22-2007, 08:19 PM   #11
Al Hawley
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Nov 2004
Location: Prescott, AZ
Distribution: FC3 , SuSE9.0, Suse9.1
Posts: 25

Rep: Reputation: 15
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!!
 
Old 02-23-2007, 12:27 PM   #12
klarsin
Member
 
Registered: Oct 2006
Distribution: Ubuntu / Mepis
Posts: 144

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 15
Quote:
Originally Posted by redwing57
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.


title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-28-386
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-28-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-28-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-28-386 (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-28-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-28-386
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-27-386
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-27-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-27-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-27-386 (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-27-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-27-386
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-26-386
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-26-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-26-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-26-386 (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-26-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-26-386
boot

title Ubuntu, memtest86+
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
boot

Last edited by klarsin; 02-23-2007 at 12:29 PM.
 
Old 02-23-2007, 02:30 PM   #13
redwing57
Member
 
Registered: Jan 2005
Location: Yorktown, VA
Distribution: CentOS, Ubuntu, MEPIS
Posts: 30

Rep: Reputation: 15
klarsen,

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.

Rob
 
Old 02-24-2007, 12:16 PM   #14
klarsin
Member
 
Registered: Oct 2006
Distribution: Ubuntu / Mepis
Posts: 144

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 15
Quote:
Originally Posted by redwing57
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.

Terminal response:
me:/boot/grub$ sudo gedit menu.lst

(gedit:6064): Gdk-WARNING **: locale not supported by Xlib

(gedit:6064): Gdk-WARNING **: cannot set locale modifiers

New edited menu.lst:

title Ubuntua, kernel 2.6.15-27-386
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-27-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-27-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-27-386 (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-27-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-27-386
boot

title Ubuntu, memtest86+
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
boot

I added the "a" to Ubuntu to see if it would show at boot up, it did'nt.
 
Old 02-24-2007, 02:22 PM   #15
redwing57
Member
 
Registered: Jan 2005
Location: Yorktown, VA
Distribution: CentOS, Ubuntu, MEPIS
Posts: 30

Rep: Reputation: 15
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.

Rob
 
  


Reply

Tags
dual boot, grub, menulst, multiboot


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off



Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
No dual boot GRUB option wc5b Fedora 4 11-16-2006 11:04 PM
Mepis, GRUB and XP boot loading problems eccentric4 MEPIS 9 09-25-2005 06:32 PM
xp won't boot with mepis and grub chiklit Linux - Newbie 3 01-04-2005 01:48 AM
Grub boot loader menu shows two linux boot options pramos Linux - Newbie 3 09-12-2004 11:40 PM
Mandrake 9 - Edit boot option in grub explorer Linux - Distributions 6 02-28-2003 03:36 PM

LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Distributions > MEPIS

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 12:32 PM.

Main Menu
Advertisement
My LQ
Write for LQ
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute content, let us know.
Main Menu
Syndicate
RSS1  Latest Threads
RSS1  LQ News
Twitter: @linuxquestions
Open Source Consulting | Domain Registration