Installing 3 OS.

[Mike Adolf]

Neil wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 7:38 PM, Mike Adolf <mlnx at mho.com> wrote:
>   
>> I now have Ubuntu 8.04 and Vista dual boot on one internal drive. I also
>> have a second internal drive on which I want to put Ubuntu 8.10 but I
>> want to install it in such a way that my current grub does not know it
>> is there. When I want to run 8.10 I would like to interrupt the boot
>> process and reset the boot order to boot first off the second internal
>> drive on which an independent grub knows nothing about the other two OS.
>>
>> How can this best be achieved?
>>
>> Mike
>>
>>     
> Hi Mike
>
> First: Why do you wish to use another way beyond one Grub with entries
> for Vi$ta, 8.04 and 8.10??
>
> Second: What motherboard do you have? On my Asus I can simply press F8
> (not sure) to go into the boot device selector menu thingy, and select
> a different drive (without going into the BIOS). This may be a viable
> backup plan for when Grub cannot activate another Grub easily, if your
> mother board supports such a feature.
> I assume you have a desktop system, so you can easily disconnect one
> of the drives for installation (or the installer of 8.10 will "see"
> there is another OS installed on the other disk and adjust grub
> accordingly)
>
> Hope it helps.
>
> Neil
>
>
>   
Neil

First: Why do you wish to use another way beyond one Grub with entries
for Vi$ta, 8.04 and 8.10??

If I just install 8.10 on the external drive, I think grub will require 
that the disk be on at boot time. The external disk has a distracting 
hum and sometimes I want to have it off.

F12 brings up the boot order menu on my Dell

Glenn Holmer replied with the following:

"Just install 8.10's GRUB to the boot sector of the partition /boot is located in,
then use "chainloader +1" from the "master" GRUB on the first drive.
That should give you the 8.10's GRUB menu when you select it."

Even doing this, I am still not sure Grub will work if the external is off.



Mike