Carlos E. R. composed on 2017-05-15 22:44 (UTC+0200):
John Andersen wrote:
Dual Boot has become a minefield of late. Dueling Distros. Battling boot loaders. Any one system can put your entire multiboot installation at risk. And that's before Windows 10 shenanigans kick in.
The only notable thing Win10 changed here is it refuses to assign anything other than C: to its system partition. Its system partitions are still on logical volumes, but it assigns D: to the primary partition containing its boot paraphernalia, which like Vista, 7 and XP before them, can chainload a Grub or Lilo installed to a primary partition for booting Linux. I've not had reason to try, but I suspect the Win10 boot manager might even be able to launch a FOSS bootloader installed to a logical partition.
It is in fact doable and simple.
You need to have all distributions boot from its own partitions. Do not allow any operating system, except one, to write to the MBR. Choose one system to write and control the MBR, only one. Or none, doing the controlling yourself, as has been done here for in excess of two decades. They're my machines, so I get to decide what goes in the MBR, which excludes Grub, Lilo and every other bootloader that wasn't originally designed to boot DOS on a 16 bit IBM PC.
The rest must boot from their respective partitions only, under control of the main operating system.
Ie, one grub controls it all.
For those who still use a BIOS and MBR partitioning, generic DOS/OS2/Windows compatible code works the same as ever whether Linux lives in the system or not. It's called the neutral MBR method: http://old-en.opensuse.org/Bugs/grub#How_does_a_PC_boot_.2F_How_can_I_set_up... https://web.archive.org/web/20070428051951/http://en.opensuse.org/Bugs/grub#... Windows' bootloaders can launch Grub, just as Grub can launch a Windows bootloader. Neither system's native bootloader need write anything to the MBR once the PC's admin asserts control. If the primary boot fails here, it's my fault, not some random update flaw. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org