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Mandriva 2008 installer and Grub location


Marrea
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Uh.. did you type all that when adjusting Grub?

Nope, although I am a touch typist I copy and paste too!!

 

... but can you edit the boot entries at the boot-screen with ntldr? Grub allows you to change them instantly (nice feature in case things go wrong. JMHO).

You can't edit ntldr's entries at the boot-screen but then you never have to because things never do go wrong with it. What it does is simply take you to the individual distro's Grub menu and if there is anything wrong once you have got to Grub of course you can then edit from there.

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  • 1 year later...

I came upon this thread because I was concerned whether this would be a problem if I installed Mandriva on a system with Windows (and possibly another OS) on it already. It does look like restoring the MBR after installing Mandriva would be necessary, unless I chose to use Grub as the primary boot loader.

 

I personally used both the XP/NT boot loader (editing boot.ini) and grub for multiple operating systems - which can be XP, Linux, and FreeBSD, in my case.

 

If XP is installed, then I use the NT loader - the hardest part is obtaining the boot records to put in C:\, which are referred to in boot.ini. That's easy for FreeBSD on the same driver - you just use the /boot/boot0 file from the FreeBSD partition. It's a bit more work with Linux - use dd to copy the right boot record.

 

When using only grub, for multiple Linux versions, each version should have its own /boot and /boot/grub directory, so that kernel updates are automatically put in that OS's menu.list file. The FIRST Linux version's menu.lst file should then have the links to the others, in a section that isn't automatically updated. Then there will be NO need to manually edit any menu.lst file, except when adding or removing Linux versions, and that need be done only in the first menu.lst file.

 

Grub will also be able to boot a FreeBSD system. Here's an example from a system with Ubuntu on it:

 

# Put static boot stanzas before and/or after AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST

 

# Choice 0: use 1st BSD subpartition in disk 1 partition 3

title FreeBSD 7.1

root (hd0,2,a)

kernel /boot/loader

 

# (A stanza for booting Windows XP would be put here, too)

 

### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

 

Actually, if you do have Windows on the system, you can still have grub in the MBR, AND use the Windows boot loader - you just have to have a stanza for loading Windows in menu.lst, and once you get to the Windows boot record in the first partition, it will run the Windows loader. So it's not a disaster to have the Linux install overwrite the MBR.

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Here's an example of how to link to Windows in grub's menu.lst. Actually, the Linux installer will probably put a stanza in like this, if it detects Windows on the system.

 

title Microsoft Windows XP Professional

root (hd0,0)

savedefault

makeactive

chainloader +1

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