dual booting kubuntu and Opensuse

[Goh Lip]

Willy K. Hamra wrote:

> already done these, after getting few boot errors, i realized suse's grub 
> doesn't like my savedefault, so i booted kubuntu manually, and restored our 
> grub on the device, and i always have a copy of my menu.lst backed up with a 
> million different name ;)

Willy, is your Kubuntu grub on ext4? I am not sure what kernel your Suse 
uses, the older kernels will not be able to access ext4 and so cannot 
update the 'savedefault'.

> eventually, i edited SUSE's fstab, and removed the boot partition from there, 
> and let it use the boot directory in its root partition. i kept ubuntu's 
> menu.lst and grub, copied the entries from suse's menu.lst over to ubuntu's 
> file, edited them of course to reflect correct disk usage.
> so now, any editing suse does to its /boot directory is quite useless, as grub 
> is reading from ubuntu's sepearate /boot partition.
> i also noticed how suse always keeps a link called vmlinuz pointing to the 
> newest kernel, so i edited menu.lst to actually point at that link, so any 
> future kernels will always be booted without any problems. same goes for 
> initrd. all in all, i'm quite satisfied with the setup. the only disadvantage 
> is that suse can't properly cooperate with ubuntu so they can both edit the 
> menu.lst fairly, so suse's access to its own menu.lst is useless, and so is 
> KDE's access to it, but oh well, that's not really needed.
> thanks for your help Goh :)


FYI, I set up a partition called Booto on ext2 with 150 MB. In it I set 
up boot/grub and also use kernel of at least 2.6.28.11 so it can read 
ext4. I append below my complete simple /boot/grub/menu.lst
<<start>>

default        0
timeout        6
#hiddenmenu
color white/blue yellow/blue


title           Kde4
configfile     (hd0,4)/boot/grub/menu.lst

title            Kde3
configfile      (hd0,7)/boot/grub/menu.lst

title            Kinky
configfile       (hd0,1)/boot/grub/menu.lst


title            Vista
rootnoverify     (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader    +1

title            Wins7
rootnoverify     (hd0,3)
makeactive
chainloader    +1

title           Ekxtra
configfile      (hd0,8)/boot/grub/menu.lst


<<end>>

This /boot/grub/menu.lst need not be changed at all unless I want to 
resequence  or change its title and is done through any Linux distro. 
This grub is set to (hd0).

As per my previous message, I will install any Linux to any of the 
partition and let the grub install into its own OS partition. If I 
forget at installation and the grub sets up to (hd0), which it will do 
by default, I can easily reset back this "master" or "first grub" back 
at any grub menu itself when it starts up ( root...then setup). Another 
small point to add is that the OS' grub is set to hidden and timeout to 
3 secs.

Hope this information is useful.

Regards,
Goh Lip

Das Wahre ist das Ganze.
                 - Hegel

(the truth is the world)