Grub 2 and moved sytem (rant and question)

[Doug]

On 11/19/2010 12:30 AM, Mark wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 9:41 PM, Thierry de Coulon<tcoulon at decoulon.ch>  wrote:
/snip/  excuse the excess white space--I don't know how to clean it up.
> Mark pointed me to the idea of doing what's supposed _not_ to be done, editing the

grub.conf file, which probably would let me boot the new system. But it's

>> not clear to me how to make the change permanent, would update-grub from new
>> system automatically correct the grub settings or would I have to manually add
>> the new UUIDs to the manual config?
>>
> Yes and no, in that order.  If you read the online doc for grub 2
> (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2), it's a little clearer on
> how to do things like this.  I suppose with this being the wave of the
> future one might as well learn it now....
>
>
>
> (Actually, it's /boot/grub/grub.cfg....)
>
I've mentioned this before on one of these lists.  Ubuntu's grub or 
grub2 or whatever
it uses makes a mess of any kind of multiple booting, putting two or 
three or more
versions of itself in the list--some of which are /home, and not 
bootable at all--and
leaving out at least one other OS, in my case.  Besides, the typeface is 
ugly and you
don't get enough time to choose.

I found an answer.  Since I use PCLinuxOs, I put in the live boot disk, 
and went to
More Applications>Redo MBR.  It will tell you it found other Linuxes, 
and do you
want to add them, and you say yes.  Then it will bring up a script, 
which you can edit
on-screen, without any special editor--just modify what you have to with 
the keyboard.
You will have to comment out at least one section, line-by-line (#) for 
the sections you
don't want to have appear.  (You may have to run GParted first, to 
figure out what OS is
on what partitions.)  When you have done, save and close.  It will ask 
if you want to
write a new boot record, and you tell it yes.  Take out the live disk, 
and restart the
system.  You will have a nice, easily readable boot selection screen, 
hopefully with
only one version of each of your Linuxes and Windows, if you're using 
it.  I'm not sure
whether you need to have installed PCLOS, or whether the live disk will 
just do its thing
without the rest of the OS installed.  I suspect it will, but if 
somebody tries this without
PCLOS installed, let us know if it all works like I said.

As an aside, yes, this is a free ad for PCLOS.  I like it. It uses KDE4, 
but in a civilized
fashion.  I have recently installed Mint, and I like that also, but I 
haven't found a way
to kill the scratch-pad on the laptop with Mint--I can do it with PCLOS.
(Synaptiks--note the last two letters.)  Mint seems to have undone some 
of the
screwy things that Ubuntu put in when it forked from Debian, and it will 
import some
KDE4 programs and run them in the Gnome environment, which is nice.

As they say, YMMV.  Good luck.  --doug

-- 
Blessed are the peacemakers...for they shall be shot at from both sides. --A. M. Greeley