Dua boot Fedora 16 and Mint 12

tech291083 · #1 1st June 2012, 02:18 AM

Hi,

I want to dual boot Fedora 16 32 bit and Mint 12 32 bit. I have created 3 primary partitions, one for swap, one for Fedora 16 and one for Mint 12. I installed Fedora to sda1 and its Grub to the MBR. Then I installed Mint to sda3 and its Grub to sda3. Now when the pc boots, it does not show Mint on the boot menu and it only shows Fedora, why so? I think Mint 12 also uses Grub2, right? Here is the page on Distrowatch web site that says so.

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint

Here, sda1 is for Fedora and sda3 is for Mint. While sda2 is swap partition. I installed Fedora first and then Mint.
Please help me, thanks. Here is what I see in Fedora in a terminal.

Code:

[root@localhost john]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000db6d0

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048   634882047   317440000   83  Linux
/dev/sda2       634882048   645367807     5242880   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3       645367808   976773119   165702656   83  Linux

Code:

[root@localhost john]# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs          298G  3.2G  280G   2% /
devtmpfs        2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /dev
tmpfs           2.0G   92K  2.0G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           2.0G   40M  2.0G   2% /run
/dev/sda1       298G  3.2G  280G   2% /
tmpfs           2.0G   40M  2.0G   2% /run
tmpfs           2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /media

tech291083 · #2 1st June 2012, 02:29 AM

Here are the screen shots of a tool called Disk Utility, so that you can have a proper idea, thanks. As per he second screen shot, Mint is not mounted, is it what is wrong?

sonoran · #3 1st June 2012, 06:27 AM

Try running

Code:

# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

and see if os-prober finds Mint.

I'm not familiar with Mint, but there are some issues with installing grub2 to a partition (instead of mbr). It's possible something went awry there.

tech291083 · #4 1st June 2012, 08:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sonoran

Try running

Code:

# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

and see if os-prober finds Mint.

I'm not familiar with Mint, but there are some issues with installing grub2 to a partition (instead of mbr). It's possible something went awry there.

Thanks, but I need to run that command in a Fedora terminal, right?

sonoran · #5 1st June 2012, 08:30 AM

Yeah, as root. So sudo if you've configured that, or

Code:

su -
<enter root password>

tech291083 · #6 1st June 2012, 09:24 AM

ok, here it is in Fedora.

Code:

[root@localhost john]# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.conf
Generating grub.cfg ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.3.7-1.fc16.i686.PAE
Found initrd image: /boot/initramfs-3.3.7-1.fc16.i686.PAE.img
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.1.0-7.fc16.i686.PAE
Found initrd image: /boot/initramfs-3.1.0-7.fc16.i686.PAE.img
No volume groups found
Found Linux Mint 12 Lisa (12) on /dev/sda3
done

Here is some content of the /boot/grub2/grub.conf file in Fedora, which I have not modified at all. Here is the content of a portion/paragraph called /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober

Code:

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
menuentry "Linux Mint 12 32-bit, 3.0.0-12-generic (/dev/sda3) (on /dev/sda3)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
        insmod part_msdos
        insmod ext2
        set root='(hd0,msdos3)'
        search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 791c77e5-5819-442d-9199-7a6fd0543056
        linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-generic root=UUID=791c77e5-5819-442d-9199-7a6fd0543056 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
        initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-generic
}
menuentry "Linux Mint 12 32-bit, 3.0.0-12-generic (/dev/sda3) -- recovery mode (on /dev/sda3)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
        insmod part_msdos
        insmod ext2
        set root='(hd0,msdos3)'
        search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 791c77e5-5819-442d-9199-7a6fd0543056
        linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-generic root=UUID=791c77e5-5819-442d-9199-7a6fd0543056 ro recovery nomodeset
        initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-generic
}
 
### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###

I think I have done the installation right, but there seems to be some little modification that I need to and you please help me do so, thanks a lot for your help so far.

sonoran · #7 1st June 2012, 10:19 AM

Does the option to boot Mint appear in the grub2 menu now when you reboot? The "recovery mode" part is suspicious.

If Mint doesn't boot properly, but puts you into some sort of recovery shell, there are a couple things you can try. The first is to enter

Code:

grub2-install --force /dev/sda3

which works in Fedora but might not in Mint.

Reboot into Fedora and run the "grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg" again, then reboot and see if Mint works.

If it doesn't, and you're back in recovery mode again, I would run

Code:

grub2-install hd0

That should put Mint's grub2 onto the mbr. It really makes no difference which grub2 controls the booting as long as you can boot both systems. If you really want to you could then do the same thing in Fedora (grub2-install hd0), so you would get Fedora's grub2 again.

Assuming I'm right about all that, what happened is that the attempt to install Mint's grub2 to the sda3 partition didn't work. Grub2 really doesn't like being on a partition, so the --force option is required.

tech291083 · #8 1st June 2012, 06:04 PM

Oh, it works now ie Mint boots and so does Fedora. I made a silly mistake. I typed the following command in fedora.

Code:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.conf

In fact the right command is, the one that you have given me.

Code:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

What an idiot I am. Apologies for the trouble I have caused you. Thanks a lot.

If I want to check Grub version in Mint, then the command should be..

Code:

grub --version

right?

sonoran · #9 1st June 2012, 08:06 PM

Great that you got it working - nice job. I've never tried Mint, but I think they use some different commands with grub2 than Fedora does. You can check by running "man grub" or "man grub2" in a Mint terminal.

nonamedotc · #10 1st June 2012, 10:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tech291083

If I want to check Grub version in Mint, then the command should be..

Code:

grub --version

right?

If I remember right, mint used grub2. To check the grub2 version,

Code:

grub2-install -v
grub2-install (GRUB) 2.00~beta4

This is from Fedora of course but this is the command you would need to use. If not, use grub-install -v.

To work more with GRUB management in Mint, I would recommend looking at this thread. It might be interesting .... Cheers.