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Bob S wrote:
Hello SuSE people,
No answer on my last request so I'll state the problem differently this time.
My Grub bootup menu is different ( many less entries) than the bootloader menu as shown in Yast. Why? How can I fix it ?
Bob S
OK, Now I found the first part: <quote> Hello SuSE people, I haave three different versions of SuSE and each containing at least two different kernels. Ijust added a jen kernel to 10.3 and 11.0. I checked the menu.lst file for each distro and they are correct. Going into Yast bootloader all of my desired options are there. Trouble is, that when I reboot the menu doesn't have half the options it shows in Yast. Am I doing something wrong? Bob S </quote> Bob, Same answer, send the info requested in my first reply so we can be sure, but here is what I suspect is going on. First you have more than one /boot partition. (probably one for each version -- which is 100% OK). Grub, or any boot loader for that matter, can only operate on one /boot partition at a time and only one is the primary /boot partition called after the BIOS passes control to the boot loader. (somebody has got to be first -- Right?) To boot all of your operating systems, grub, for lack of better words, daisey chains the various /boot partitions together. It starts with which ever one is configured to get control first and then, if it isn't booting the OS associated with that /boot partition, grub will pass control to the next /boot partition associated with the menu entry you chose from the first menu. Basically: BIOS passes control to the first /boot partition | | [grub: 1st /boot menu] | boot my OS? -- yes --> load the OS | no, pass control to next /boot | [grub: next /boot menu] | boot my OS? -- yes --> load the 2nd OS | no, pass control to next /boot | [grub: next /boot menu] and so on.... At any stage in the game, you are only going to see the menu entries associated with the /boot/grub/menu.lst file that is on the /boot partition that has control. Grub doesn't scour the all hard drives on each install collecting menu entries from every boot partition it finds. It just installs, configures it self to boot the OS it is installing and then creates an entry to point to the /boot partition that was primary before the current install. So, what I bet happened in your case is that, whatever your last installed OS was, you are looking at the "menu" created by the yast installer that sits on the /boot partition for that install. You don't see all the choices on every menu because you are only looking at the --- last installed --- menu. The other /boot partitions have their own "menu" and when control is passed to them, you will see the remaining choices. That also explains why when you boot to another of your OS's and check the grub menu with Yast, you will see all of your choices for each install. It's normal, at first perplexing, but normal none the least. If you want to go check each one individually from any of your OS's, since you have individual /boot partitions, it's pretty easy to do. First, just do a: cat /proc/partitions Now just look at the sizes. When the installer creates separate boot partitions, it usually creates them approximately 75Meg in size. So just note the /dev/hdc2 or whatever device name is associated with the 75 meg partitions and create mount points (as root), say: mkdir /mnt/boot1 mkdir /mnt/boot2 .. and so on Then mount the boot partitions there (also as root) and take a look: ** using hdc2 and hdd2 as examples of the 75 meg partitions.. mount /dev/hdc2 /mnt/boot1 mount /dev/hdd2 /mnt/boo2 And confirm: cat /mnt/boot1/boot/grub/menu.lst cat /mnt/boot2/boot/grub/menu.lst Then to unmount them, just use umount: umount /mnt/boot1 umount /mnt/boot2 You only hope and pray that the last installed OS configured grub properly to pass control to the previous install correctly. Otherwise, things get real interesting. Throw fake RAID in there and it gets down-right fun: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=445602 -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. | openSoftware und SystemEntwicklung Rankin Law Firm, PLLC | Countdown for openSuSE 11.1 www.rankinlawfirm.com | http://counter.opensuse.org/11.1/small -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org