Dual Boot Fedora Versions

[michelangelo]

Hello

I would like the install Fedora 10 beside my Fedora 8 install. I have split my hard drive in two, one partion has Fedora 8 installed, and I installed Fedora 10 to the remaining free space using the defualt partion layout.

After F10 was installed, I lost F8 as an option in the grub menu, also there was multipule partions mounted as /boot. One being F10's /boot and one being media/boot when running F10...

Is there a better way to dual boot Fedora versions, help would be much appreciated. I would like to use F10's grub menu.

Thanks

Michael

[stoat]

Is there a better way to dual boot Fedora versions...Using one Fedora's GRUB boot loader to boot multiple Fedoras is a good way to do it. You should try adjusting the F10 GRUB boot loader to boot F8. In Fedora 10, open /boot/grub/grub.conf for editing and add a section to boot Fedora 8. I recommend trying this...title Fedora 8
configfile (hdx,y)/grub/grub.confIf you do not have a separate boot partition for Fedora 8, it should look like this...title Fedora 8
configfile (hdx,y)/boot/grub/grub.confYou change x & y to the drive & partition of the Fedora 8 boot partition (or whatever partition contains its kernels and GRUB files).



also there was multipule partions mounted as /boot.Are you logged in as root when see that?

[michelangelo]

Thanks stoat

I will try that. I am logged in as my general system user.

/boot has the Fedora 10 images.

/media/boot with the name _boot has the Fedora 8 images.

How does Fedeora 8 know its /boot is _boot?

Cheers

Michael

[michelangelo]

Worked like a charm!

Interesting that Fedora 10 Grub did not detect Fedora 8 however...is this a Bug in Grub?

Michael

[stoat]

I will try that. I am logged in as my general system user.

/boot has the Fedora 10 images.

/media/boot with the name _boot has the Fedora 8 images.

How does Fedeora 8 know its /boot is _boot?These kinds of auto-mount questions come up often nowadays. Either to make it happen or stop it from happening. I found myself taking steps to stop a pair of external drives from being auto-mounted. It's the desktop environment (i.e., Gnome) that decides what to auto-mount. Anyway, if you want to, you can probably add partitions that auto-mount like that to your fstab and they will be mounted as specified there instead of in /media (95% certain of that). I like to auto-mount other distros' partitions to mount points specified in /etc/fstab. Windows, too. But that's just me. Another idea is to just ignore that partition in /media. I mean, it's not harming anything there. If you don't look at it, it may not bother you. Seriously. But if you don't want it in the fstab and you are determined to stop it from being auto-mounted, we can press on with that.



nteresting that Fedora 10 Grub did not detect Fedora 8 however...is this a Bug in Grub?That's actually an issue with Anaconda during installation. Anaconda is great at automatically adding Windows to the boot loader operating systems list, but at the same time it is famous for ignoring other Linux systems. But if you look very closely in Anaconda, there is a button to "Add" operating systems (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=16770&d=1216746511) that it did not detect and put into the boot loader operating system list. Anyway, it's so easy to deal with after-the-fact that I don't think many people care about it much.

[michelangelo]

Hi Stoat

Thanks for all your help on this. I have been doing a bit of reading about Grub.

The other day I stupidly deleted a partition that was before my F10 /boot parition and it broke Grub (ended up with Grub> prompt). To fix it I reinstalled F10 since I had not configured it yet.

I am assuming, because I deleted the partition it changed the F10 /boot partion number and Grub could not find it...

I am interested in how I could have fixed the problem using the Grub prompt. I have read you can reinstall Grub using grub-install and this fixes most problems (not grub.conf problems).

One query I have is, with a dual boot system how would the reinstall of grub know which /boot partition to use since there is a F8 and F10 /boot?

Cheers

Michael

[stoat]

I am interested in how I could have fixed the problem using the Grub prompt. I have read you can reinstall Grub using grub-install and this fixes most problems (not grub.conf problems).Open grub.conf with a text editor and manually change the partition number in the relevant command line(s). Do that after accessing the file system by any available means (linux rescue, a LiveCD, another Linux system in the machine). The Super Grub Disk (http://www.supergrubdisk.org/) can boot a system (that is capable of being booted) even when the GRUB config file is bad by directly booting the kernel and initial ramdisk. Then fix the grub.conf using a text editor in the now running system.



One query I have is, with a dual boot system how would the reinstall of grub know which /boot partition to use since there is a F8 and F10 /boot?The grub-install command (http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Installing-GRUB-using-grub_002dinstall) is a front-end script for the GRUB shell. It can run only inside an operating system (even linux rescue is a running operating system). The GRUB shell itself is invoked by /sbin/grub in an operating system. But it can also work in a so-called "native" environment outside an operating system (i.e., boot the computer to a grub> prompt with a GRUB boot disk). Anyway...

Either grub-install or the GRUB shell can be used to re-install the GRUB boot loader. With grub-install, the images in the boot directory of the current root device are used when GRUB is re-installed. In a running system, for example, it will use the images in the boot directory of that system. In linux rescue ("Rescue install system" with the Fedora DVD or first CD), it uses the images in the boot directory of the system that you designated with the chroot command. There is also a --root-directory command line option for grub-install that will cause it to use the images in the directory specified by that option.

When using the GRUB shell to re-install the boot loader, the root command is often used to set the root device and thereby specify the partition with the GRUB images to be used. Generally, the root and setup commands are used together (http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Installing-GRUB-natively) to set the root device and re-install GRUB, but the setup command alone has a syntax format to specify the install_device and image_device (http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#setup) in one setup command.

[michelangelo]

Thanks Stoat

That makes it allot clearer.

Cheers

Michael