Triple boot Win 7, Fedora 13, Ubuntu last.

[water spirit]

I have Installed Win 7 then Fedora 13 then Ubuntu 10.04 last. I installed Fedora as Dual Boot from the live CD and used the default installation and used it for a few days then installed Ubuntu last but Grub 2 is not picking up Fedora. Any help please. I have previously triple booted using Win 7 Kubuntu and Ubuntu.

[stoat]

Hello water spirit,

You didn't specifically say it, but I suppose you have already tried update-grub in Ubuntu.

If you have already tried that and mean that it completely ignores the Fedora system, then I don't know what to do to make the 30_os-prober script create an entry for Fedora. Sorry. But an easy thing for you to consider is to add your own custom entry in /etc/grub.d/40_custom for Fedora.

If you mean that 30_os-prober does create a Fedora menu entry, but it doesn't work (I experienced that), then it might be related to Fedora 13 having an initramfs file instead of an initrd file. You might be able to modify /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober to fix that. mycenae told how to do it at ubuntuforum.org here...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1367305

No promises, of course.

[water spirit]

@ stoat, Thank you for your reply, I have been looking at this document on grub2 but I seem to be having a senior moment and can not work out how to save the changes to /etc/default/grub. I have run update-grub2.

[stoat]

I'm not ashamed to say that I have relied heavily on several Ubuntu threads on GRUB 2. Let's face it, it's out in front on GRUB 2 at the moment. To me, you don't need to do anything to /etc/grub/default. Instead, it's /etc/grub.d/40_custom. There should be one already there with those first two lines. They're important so leave those there and add your custom lines below them. One thing you can do in your situation is to mount the Fedora boot partition and open /boot/grub/grub.conf to copy the title, root, kernel, and initrd lines for the newest kernel. Paste them into 40_custom and modify them for GRUB 2 syntax. Just for example only...

From my Fedora 13 grub.conf...

title Fedora (2.6.33.4-95.fc13.i686.PAE)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.33.4-95.fc13.i686.PAE ro root=UUID=2945f858-e671-4d83-8945-277b78943a7d rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.33.4-95.fc13.i686.PAE.img

What I would do to convert them to GRUB 2 syntax in /etc/grub.d/40_custom...

menuentry "Fedora (2.6.33.4-95.fc13.i686.PAE)" {
set root=(hd0,3)
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.33.4-95.fc13.i686.PAE ro root=UUID=2945f858-e671-4d83-8945-277b78943a7d rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.33.4-95.fc13.i686.PAE.img
}

Note particularly the change in the partition number and the change of "kernel" to "linux".

Save the file and run sudo update-grub in a terminal. Reboot and see what happens. If it works, good. But you'll have to redo it when the Fedora kernel gets updated. If you are willing to re-install Fedora's GRUB in the first sector of the Fedora boot partition, then you can use simply the chainloader command (like I do). It's "immune" to breakage by a Fedora kernel update. Example of that from my Ubuntu 40_custom...

menuentry "Fedora 13" {
set root=(hd0,3)
chainloader +1
}

P.S.: One thing to remember about these GRUB 2 scripts in /etc/grub.d is that they must be executable. That sample 40_custom should already be so. But if you ever create one from scratch, remember to make it executable like this...

sudo chmod +x /etc/grub.d/40_custom

[katakbiru]

i have installed Win 7 and Fedora 14, but then, when i installed Ubuntu 10, bootloader for fedora isnt in the list. why eh?

what should i do?

(i think my question related to the topic, sorry for mistaken)

[stoat]

Why? I don't know that. But if your version of Ubuntu is using GRUB 2, and if the update-grub command failed to add a menu entry for Fedora, then I would create a custom entry for Fedora in /etc/grub.d/40_custom.

[katakbiru]

im using ubuntu 10.10. now trying to install fedora 14. now stuck at adding partition.

i got
sdb1 ntfs (win 7) 100000mb
sdb2 ntfs (system reserved) 100mb
sdb3 ext4 (ubuntu 10.10) 38147
extended
sdb5 (swap) 2861
free 97365

sorry, im not familiar with linux..

[stoat]

Things have changed. Okay.

You listed three primary partitions and one extended partition. So the partition table is full, and only logical partitions can be created for Fedora. That will be okay because Fedora works fine when installed entirely in logical partitions. And if the free space you listed is inside that extended partition, then any of the Anaconda partition options will work including a custom one that you create. But if the free space is outside of the extended partition, then you will have to use a partition manager to get that free space inside the extended partition before you can create more logical partitions for another operating system. It happens all the time. The result of this command in an Ubuntu terminal will show the situation better.

sudo fdisk -l

About the boot loader, if you are now using Ubuntu's GRUB to boot Ubuntu and Windows, then I would choose the option that will install Fedora's GRUB in the first sector of the Fedora boot partition. That will prevent it from disturbing the existing boot loader arrangement, and you can add Fedora to Ubuntu's boot menu. To do that, watch for and click the "Change device" button during the installation of Fedora. A pop-up window will appear with the choice being obvious. Finish the installation and reboot. Nothing will seem to be different. Then run the update-grub command in an Ubuntu terminal. There is at least a good chance that it will add a menu entry for Fedora in Ubuntu's boot menu. If it doesn't, then you can create a custom menu entry in /etc/grub.d/40_custom.

[katakbiru]

thanks stoat.
i've done what u mention.

quiet tricky, fuuuh.. now, i got triple boot.
fyi, i spent about 4days, trying to triple boot. so now, i know how to handle it after i got what i want.
thanks to u again. phewww...