[Mageia-discuss] can bootable partitions be detected during installation?

[Wolfgang Bornath]

2012/4/29 blind Pete <0123peter at gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> During a test installation of M2b3 some other installations are
> detected and get listed in the Grub menu, but others don't.
> For example, Ubuntu is ignored.  That uses Grub2 so it would be
> a bit much to expect Grub to understand it, BUT Ubuntu's Grub2
> is installed on Unbutu's root partition.
>
> Can partitions with boot loaders on them be detected and listed
> in Grub's menu as something to be chained?  i.e. Install M2b3
> and get Grub installed to the mbr.  Then on booting, Grub could
> present a menu that includes all of the standard M2b3 options,
> any other kernels that were found (not the Ubuntu kernels because
> they are under Grub2 and too hard) and an entry for the Ubuntu
> partition.  The partition is LABELed "Ubuntu".  If "Ubuntu" were
> selected from the M2b3 mbr Grub menu, then the Grub2 on the Ubuntu
> root partition could be chained (and then an Ubuntu kernel).
>
> Is this do-able?

Yes. That is the way I install all distributions.

1. Install a minimal small distribution which uses grub, without X.
The only purpose is to put its grub into the MBR and serve as the
"steering center".

2. Install all other distributions with putting their bootloader into
their respective root partition

3. Enter the installations into the menu.lst of the steering center's grub with

title <distributiion name>
root (hd0,4)
chainloader +

Here the bootloader of the distribution to start lies in /dev/sda5

The advantage of this way is not only that you can install
distributions with different bootloaders. Whenever you install a new
kernel in any of these distributions you have to do nothing extra
because the new kernel is set in the distribution's bootloader, not in
the master boot loader.

-- 
wobo