[ale] Getting Linux OS to boot

[Michael Hirsch]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
Trey
> Sizemore
> Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2005 12:32 PM
> To: ale at ale.org
> Subject: [ale] Getting Linux OS to boot
> 
> I have 2 IDE drives laid out as follows:
> 
> 1 (master) - 80GB with FreeBSD occupying entire drive
> 2 (slave) - 80GB with 4 linux distros
>     hdb1- Fedora Core 3 /
>     hdb2 - Fedora Core 3 /home
>     hdb3 - swap
>     hdb4 - ***EXTENDED PARTITION***
>     hdb5 - SUSE 9.2 /
>     hdb6 - SUSE 9.2 /home
>     hdb7 - Mandrake 10.2 /
>     hdb8 - Mandrake 10.2 /home
>     hdb9 - Arch 0.7 /
>     hdb10 - Arch 0.7 /home
> 
> When I installed the Linux distros I chose not to install a boot
loader
> for any of them (thinking that a bootmanager like GAG would handle
> this).  In retrospect, this may have been a conceptual error as GAG
> would error with "Boot sector not found or corrupt" for these
> partitions.  On the advice of someone on the Fedora User's list, I
> booted the Fedora CD in rescue mode and:
> # chroot /mnt/sysimage
> # /sbin/grub-install /dev/hdb1
> 
> When I rebooted with GAG and set it to boot Fedora using hdb1, it now
> gives me a 'grub>' prompt.
> 
> How can I recover this and get Fedora to boot beyond this?  I'm hoping
> luck with this will enable me to do the same for the other Linux
> distros.  If there are any other suggestions on this, I'm certainly
open
> to them as well.

You now need to edit Fedora's /boot/grub/menu.lst file and give it
entries for all the different linux distributions.  Each one needs a
different root, kernel, and initrd entry.

My redhat grub entry looks like this:

default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,4)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-37.9.legacy)
        root (hd0,4)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-37.9.legacy ro root=LABEL=/
        initrd /initrd-2.4.20-37.9.legacy.img

A few points:
1. I have a separate /boot partition.  You don't, so all the file paths
will have an extra /boot at the beginning.
2. The root command specifies which partition of the HD your
distribution is on in grub's native format.  So for you, it'll be
(hd1,0) for Fedora core 2, (hd1,4) for SuSE, etc.
3. The kernel and initrd should be the ones for each specific
distribution.
4. The root parameter on the kernel is which partition that kernel will
use in the usual linux format, so it'll be /dev/hdb1 for fedora core 2,
etc.

Michael