No Fedora grub menu for multi booting

[jimmy7]

I installed Fedora Core 6 from a DVD and typed i686 at the boot promt. I had Fedora partion unused space for the installation and had grub put on dev/hda and writen to the MBR.

Two Windows XP installations are on the first drive(80GB drive) Suse linux 10.2 is on drive hdb6(114GB drive) Then Fedora Core6 was installed on sdd6(200GB drive).

Before & after the Fedora installation I get the Suse linux grub menu with the choice to boot up XP or Suse. But no Fedora choice or Fedora grub menu.

Before I installed Suse 10.2 I would only get the Windows XP bootloader menu and no Fedora grub menu.

Also intersting is in Windows XP, Partition Magic identifies my Suse 10.2 drive as 2 seperate partitions of the type "Ext3" plus the swap partion.

THe Fedora Core 6 drive is identified as only one 200GB partition of the type 8E, shaded yellow which signifies "other". There is no "Ext3 on this drive. Maybe a problem there.

Is it possible to partition this drive to Ext3 with Partition Magic and then install Fedora into that? But the swap partition has no type of format. it's shaded white and is not Ext3.

Is it possible to skip the grub menu and boot directly into the Fedora installation from the boot DVD? Or make a boot diskette to boot from?

Thanks for any suggestion to try out.

Jimbo

[glennzo]

There's the option of booting with the Fedora DVD and using rescue mode. From rescue mode you can try to re-install grub. You state that you get the Suse grub menu. One option would be to add Fedora to your existing grub menu options and boot it that way, which should be very simple. Either way, there's plenty of help here. Of course, for anyone here to help you we'll need some basic info. Keep us posted.

[jimmy7]

There's the option of booting with the Fedora DVD and using rescue mode. From rescue mode you can try to re-install grub. You state that you get the Suse grub menu. One option would be to add Fedora to your existing grub menu options and boot it that way, which should be very simple. Either way, there's plenty of help here. Of course, for anyone here to help you we'll need some basic info. Keep us posted.

I would like to try and add the Existing Fedora installation to my Suse grub menu. Could you please give me some steps to follow or suggestion that would put me in the right direction?

Thanks
Jimbo

[nick.stumpos]

if your using the suse grub, check your menu.lst and add an entry for fedora, check the grub mapping to see what drive number it is, you say that windows sees the fedora entry as one patition? it probably doesnt recognise it as it is lvm, however you should also have created a boot partition for the fedora kernel in ext3, if you didnt i believe you will need to go back and do so, as i dont believe grub can yet read lvm

[jimmy7]

if your using the suse grub, check your menu.lst and add an entry for fedora, check the grub mapping to see what drive number it is, you say that windows sees the fedora entry as one patition? it probably doesnt recognise it as it is lvm, however you should also have created a boot partition for the fedora kernel in ext3, if you didnt i believe you will need to go back and do so, as i dont believe grub can yet read lvm


I didn't create a /boot partition thinking that the Installation program would do it automatically. That means I should have done a manual partitioning. If I can add a boot partition now & don't need to do a re-install of Fedora that would be a good thing.

[nick.stumpos]

can you post the output of fdisk -l, as well as your grub.lst

[jimmy7]

Here are the readouts. Thanks for looking. I did some messing around with the repair grub bootloader program from the boot DVD and I lost my windows XP menu entry in grub.
Oh well.

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 4844 38909398+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 4845 9728 39230730 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 4845 9728 39230698+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/hdb: 122.9 GB, 122942324736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14946 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 2 14946 120045712+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5 2 263 2104483+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdb6 264 2874 20972826 83 Linux
/dev/hdb7 2875 14946 96968308+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda2 * 2 14593 117210240 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 2 14593 117210208+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 2 24321 195350400 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 2 24321 195350368+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 2 24321 195350400 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdc5 2 1375 11036623+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdc6 1376 5605 33977443+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdc7 5606 8932 26724096 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdc8 8933 12260 26732128+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdc9 12261 15996 30009388+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdc10 15997 24321 66870531 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdd: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 * 2 30401 244188000 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdd5 2 30401 244187968+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sde: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sde1 2 38913 312560640 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sde5 2 13333 107089258+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sde6 * 13334 13346 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sde7 13347 38913 205366896 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/dm-0: 208.1 GB, 208171696128 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 25308 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 2080 MB, 2080374784 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 252 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table
linux-1obd:/home #


menu.lst

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Tue Jan 30 19:54:22 EST 2007
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd1,5)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 10.2
root (hd1,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb6 vga=0x31a resume=/dev/hdb5 splash=silent showopts
initrd /boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: floppy###
title Floppy
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader (fd0)+1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 10.2
root (hd1,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb6 vga=normal showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 edd=off 3
initrd /boot/initrd

Jimbo