[Mageia-dev] Grub and Grub2

[Michel Catudal]

Le 03/02/2012 19:05, Pierre Jarillon a écrit :
> I have installed Mageia on a disk after Ubuntu.
> After the install, I reboot and Ubuntu was ignored in Grub.
> The owner of the PC was not happy and tought that Mageia is bad.
>
> I have not found how to restore an access to Ubuntu and after an hour, I have
> reinstalled Ubuntu which install its grub2 allowing to boot on both systems.
>
> In Caudron, grub2 is not still used. Is time to switch to Grub2 ?
>

I have installed both ubuntu and mageia with no problem with regard to booting ubuntu.
You must have left ubuntu put the bootloader on the MBR. If you are going to install several Linux distribution you should install the OS on partitions and not on the MBR.

On my PC I use xosl as a bootloader and always install grub on the boot partition. A few years back I got burned when I forgot to change the default.
One thing that pisses me off on all the Linux distribution, including Mageia is that the fact that the bootloader is on the MBR is sorta hidden and it is not obvious how to switch it to the partition. It should be on the top with boxes with the choice of 
where we want it and a message that is not cryptic and makes it obvious what that does. That way I don't see where we could accidentaly screw up our system.
There is no problem if you have only one operating system to have grub on the MBR but brain dead to put it there when you have several OS. Specially when you have diffferent incompatible versions of grub.

The way I recovered the messed up boot was to boot on my xosl boot diskette and restore its boot.

Here is the layout of one of my hard disks.

Périphérique Amorce  Début        Fin      Blocs     Id  Système
/dev/sda1               1           1        8001   78  Inconnu <-- xosl
/dev/sda2               2         261     2088450    6  FAT16 <-- Free Dos
/dev/sda3   *         262         276      120487+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4             277      243201  1951295062+   5  Etendue
/dev/sda5             277         750     3807373+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6             751         765      120456   83  Linux
/dev/sda7             766         780      120456   83  Linux
/dev/sda8             781         795      120456   83  Linux
/dev/sda9             796       60000   475564131   83  Linux
/dev/sda10          60001      120000   481949968+  83  Linux
/dev/sda11         120001      160000   321299968+  83  Linux
/dev/sda12         160001      200000   321299968+  83  Linux
/dev/sda13         200001      243201   347012001   83  Linux


Michel

-- 
For OS/2 and Linux Software visit
http://home.comcast.net/~mcatudal