Cleaning up the list of o/s in a dual boot

[Daniel Carrera]

Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
> Now that I have upgraded to Dapper, my dual-boot screen shows quite a 
> long list of Ubuntus as well as WinXP. The Ubuntu choices are 2 each 
> (regular and "safe mode") for Dapper, Breezy, and Hoary. I assume that 
> the Breezy and Hoary choices are redundant now, and would like to get 
> rid of them to make the list of choices shorter and cleaner. Can I edit 
> this list and if so, how?

Yes. As root, open the file /boot/grub/menu.lst (make a backup first). 
Keep scrolling down until you see lines that look like this:

<snip>
## ## End Default Options ##

title        Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-23-386
root         (hd0,0)
kernel       /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-23-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash
initrd       /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-23-386
savedefault
boot

title        Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-23-386 (recovery mode)
root         (hd0,0)
kernel       /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-23-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro single
initrd       /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-23-386
boot
</snip>


Each block (starts with a "title" line) constitutes a boot option. You 
can hide them by deleting those lines or, better yet, commenting them 
out. (to comment out the line, put a # in front). You can also change 
the title to something friendlier looking, the title is just for the 
human user. For example, you could change the above to:


<snip>
## ## End Default Options ##

title        Jean's cool Linux parttion
root         (hd0,0)
kernel       /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-23-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash
initrd       /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-23-386
savedefault
boot

#title        Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-23-386 (recovery mode)
#root         (hd0,0)
#kernel       /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-23-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro single
#initrd       /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-23-386
#boot
</snip>


Though you didn't ask, you can get grub to show nicer colours than the 
ugly black&white default. Scroll up, near the top, and find this line:

# Pretty colours
#color cyan/blue white/blue

If you like blue, uncomment the second line to:

# Pretty colours
color cyan/blue white/blue

If you prefer brown, then use this:

# Pretty colours
#color cyan/blue white/blue
color yellow/brown white/brown

Cheers,
Daniel.
-- 
http://opendocumentfellowship.org

  "He he. Maybe the problem is with the left mouse button :)"
   -- Daniel on IRC after 5 hours trying to figure out
      why nothing worked on his thin client... (it was)