[ale] ReSOLVED: Recovering dual boot on installed systems

[John Mills]

ALErs -

One complication I hadn't mentioned: SLES (and therefore it's version of 
"Yast") couldn't mount the 'ext4' filesystems into which the openSuSE-11.3 
had been installed. Thus I couldn't use "Yast" to add the openSuSE boot 
target from SLES. "((production_server)&(latest_features)) == NULL" or 
something like that.

Brute force looked like the way to go. Yet again.

I brought the system up from the openSuSE DVD in "Rescue" mode, mounted 
both the hard-disk partitions (openSuSE knows 'ext4'), and just grafted 
the targets of openSuSE's '/boot/grub/menu.lst' onto the corresponding 
SLES file. Since the respective file systems and kernel references were 
intact, this approach didn't require that "Yast" read the 'ext4' disk.

I get a somewhat clunky boot, but now I will use "Yast" in openSuSE to 
recover my boot sector and clean up the landscape.

After that I'll graft the 'Monitor' and 'Screen' sections of SLES' X-11 
setup back onto openSuSE. [See my earlier ALE whines.]

After that I'll go looking for something else to break. &8-)

Thanks to all for your suggestions.

  - Mills

On Tue, 25 Jan 2011, Cornelis van Dijk wrote:

> I thought the "Rescue" system has a bootloader section. You probably
> need to know the devices and partitions you want to repair, such as
> /dev/sda1 etc, and where to find vmlinuz and initrd (probably in
> /boot).

> I am not familiar with SLES, does that not have a "Yast" module? If so
> you could start the dual boot from SLES. You probably still would have
> to know the items mentioned above.

> Hope this helps, Cor

> On 1/25/11, John Mills <johnmills at speakeasy.net> wrote:
>> ALErs -

>> I had a working dual boot installation of openSuSE-11.3 and SuSE Linux
>> Enterprise Server (i.e., Novell) on two disks in the same system. The SLES
>> setup went on first and its 'grub' knows only itself. The openSuSE 'grub'
>> knows of both installations and was the basis of the dual-boot
>> configuration.

>> I was rearranging the boot setup but <OOPS/> ran my changes when booted
>> into SLES. &8-( Now I can't figure out how to re-activate the dual boot.