[ubuntu-uk] Quick check prior to bug report
Terence Simpson
stdin at stdin.me.uk
Wed Jul 18 12:06:16 BST 2007
Paul Tansom wrote:
> Before I posted a bug I thought I'd do a quick check to see if anyone
> had any comments, experiences with this one. It is a minor issue, but
> I'm not 100% sure as the fix will be quite as minor.
>
> I have a recently installed Ubuntu 7.04 system and have just managed to
> get the wireless networking up and running by swapping a new card in
> that is supported by the madwifi driver. Once I had done this there was
> a selection of updates available which I duly installed. That's the
> background, now the bug.
>
> Before the updates I had modified the default OS to boot from in the
> gurb menu.lst to be 4 - I started with 3 but then realised that left me
> trying to boot a comment line! I've not considered that a bug though,
> just an odd 'feature' ;) This, sadly, is Windows XP, but that is beside
> the point.
>
> After the installation I noticed that every time I switched on the
> computer it started a memtest run. After an initial thought that
> somehow this was triggerd by a boot error I sat and watched and saw that
> it was default. After a bit of head scratching it dawned on me that two
> new lines had been added for a newly installed kernel, causing my
> default option 4 to now be the memtest line.
>
> Now in some ways this should be a bug as it messes up a perfectly usable
> boot environment with no warning. That said grub itself has not been
> updated by the kernel install (I don't think - I'm assuming that this is
> part of the automated grub setup).
>
> As I type this I realise that I should check the grub menu.lst file as
> I'm a recent convert from lilo and not sure whether grub has rewritten
> the file automatically with the new kernel, or whether it picks it up by
> some other means dynamically (probably not if you specify the default
> boot by the line). The machine is in Windows at the moment though with
> either my wife or son using it for something so I'll have to check
> later - or do a completely new install on my current desktop which is
> crying out for Linux; well I am anyway :)
>
>
When you install a new kernel (or update to a new version), the menu.lst
file is updated to include the new kernel. This is so you don't have to
manually add/remove an entry to the menu.lst.
You can, however, add "static" entrys to the list by putting them before
the part with:
### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
or after the part with:
### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
So if you would want windows to be the default boot option then you
could put it before the automatic list and set the default to be 0, as
it would the be the 1st option shown.
Terence
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