know of another dual boot program rather than grub

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

It would appear that on Feb 15, Ray Burke did say:

> PS I will look at what you said and give a go,
> the only thing that I worry about Is "type in a terminal "ls /media"
> to verify the naming convention. "
> it wont boot up with the removable racks switch on so how can verify
> the naming?????

I almost hate to jump in here when so many of the people helping you
have perhaps a better understanding of the various boot loaders than I.
But The above PS makes me think there is one thing missing in the
possible solutions I've seen offered to you. (Or more likely they
assume you already know this and so don't mention it...)

I don't want to insult your intelligence. But I simply don't know what
you do or don't know. (Nor what you know that I do not! ;-7 )

So if I seam to be explaining the obvious please bear with me...

I'm NOT really an expert, But I'm a dedicated multi-boot user (mostly
via grub though I used to use lilo...

You said "it wont boot up with the removable racks switch on"
from which I make two assumptions:

1) I believe that the "removable racks switch" is a hardware
   configuration switch. 

2) I think it's just possible that it actually changes the bios boot
   order. Meaning that when the switch is on the MBR of the first bios
   boot drive that grub would call (hd0) is not the same hard drive
   that is the first bios boot drive when the switch is off...
   
If that is the case. ( and it's a big if ) then you may simply need to
install and configure grub twice... 

That is, your current grub boot works when the switch is off. So you
may need to boot from a livecd _WITH_THE_SWITCH_ON_ and then follow
the detailed instructions that Goh Lip so kindly described as "multi-grub" 
about which I note that only the lines he marked with a * were
commands. The rest were an example of the kind of output he expected
you to see when you typed them. And of course as you no doubt figured
out, the "grub>" on some of those lines was the grub shells command
prompt, which of course you wouldn't type any more than you would type
the ( parenthesis wrapped comments he added to the end of some of the
command lines.)    ;-)

If I'm right. (And again this is a big if.) when you do this 
" _WITH_THE_SWITCH_ON_ " and get to the grub command:
* grub> setup (hd0)
And grub writes what amounts to a bootstrap loader into the MBR of the
first hard drive. [ Which basically tells bios how to find the rest of 
grub on the boot partition. {On "(hd0,7)" in Goh Lip's example...} ]

Then I think this MBR will NOT be on the same hard drive that is (hd0)
when the switch is off. And you should now have two working grub boot
systems. (Oh! No wonder he called it multi-grub. ;-7 )

One that boots with the switch on. The other that boots when it's off.

You would of course then need to update any changes twice... That is
when you need to update grub for a new kernel or anything else that
changes the file /boot/grub/menu.lst. You may have to manually edit the
other menu.lst file. That is if apt-get or aptitude automatically updates
grub while the switch is off you may need to boot again with it on and
manually update the the other one. ( in fact if an upgrade or
dist-upgrade, changes Kubuntu enough that the old kernel doesn't work
you may need to do that with the livecd ) It might be important to
note that if as I suspect, the drive order is different (and this
posting isn't a complete waste of both our time) Then the partition
names (such as (hd0,2) or /dev/sda3 or /dev/hda3 will most likely need
to be different in the two different menu.lst files. {edit carefully}

I also note that if your /etc/fstab is using device names like
/dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1 you may have problems booting with the switch
on because with a differnt boot order they wouldn't be pointing at the 
same drives...

Speaking for myself I dislike the UUID method because they don't
translate well {visually} to partition numbers. So when I must make
one fstab boot under circumstances where the /dev/name might change
I configure it to use the /dev/disk/by-id equivalents... 

Hmmmnnn I wonder if I could use those in the "root=$devicename" part of
the kernel arguments in the menu.lst file... Have to test that theory
someday.

One last point. The boot partition {On "(hd0,7)" in Goh Lip's example...}
would also the partition he called "Booto" was apparently automatically
mounted under /media by the live cd. I don't use live cd's much so I'm
not sure if that's always the case.

Here's hoping this is at least somewhat helpful...

-- 
|   ---   ___
|   <0>   <->	   Joe (theWordy) Philbrook
|	^		J(tWdy)P
|    ~\___/~	     <<jtwdyp at ttlc.net>>

<< there's nothing like an idiot who thinks he knows everything, of >>
<< course, if I actually knew everything, I'd know I was an idiot.  >>