avnd
September 12th, 2011, 09:59 PM
Hello!
I wanted a situation of having a separate boot partition that is not associated with any installed OS. I wanted Grub 2. There was a beautifully detailed instruction page for Grub Legacy in one of the Ubuntuguide pages but not for Grub 2.
I have 2 hard disks. So I wanted to set it up in such a way that I can boot into either hard disk and get the Grub 2 menu.
I did the following.
On my 1st hard disk, I partitioned as
/dev/sda1 - Grub
/dev/sda2 - Xp
/dev/sda3 - NTFS - (for unforeseen Primary Partition needs)
/dev/sda4 - Extended
/dev/sda5 - Data
On my 2nd hard disk, I partitioned as
/dev/sdb1 - Grub
Unpartitioned Space (for unforeseen Primary Partition needs)
/dev/sdb4 - Extended
/dev/sdb5 - Swap
/dev/sdb6 - Lubuntu
/dev/sdb7 - Arch
/dev/sdb8 - DATA
(I share this computer with my family. So I had to make room for them. That's the reason for the unforeseen needs).
My computer has only 256 MB RAM. So I just did a few things from the Ubuntu Live CD.
The things in the order I did.
1. Install Xp in /dev/sda2
2. Install Lubuntu in /dev/sdb6
3. Install Arch in /dev/sdb7
(Both Lubuntu and Arch had their bootloaders in the partitions and not MBR).
4. Installed Grub 2 into both /dev/sda and /dev/sdb from Ubuntu Live CD terminal (Ubuntu was dead-slow). But grub-mkconfig did not work from Live CD.
5. Rebooted into /dev/sda. Therw was no grub.cfg yet. So booted into Lubuntu from the Grub command line. Created the grub.cfg's for both /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1.
6. Now when I reboot into either hard disk, I'm able to get a Grub 2 menu from which I can boot into any of the 3 OS's (Windows Xp, Lubuntu or Arch).
Now, the issue.
I wanted to make certain that the Grub 2 was totally independent of any OS (that was the whole point, so I could repartition and install new distros without worrying about messing the other OS's). And since the Lubuntu was the only one which I had associated with Grub so far (creating the grub.cfg files), I formatted the Lubuntu partition and rebooted.
Jeez! I was getting an error message saying that a parition (mentioned with UUID) was missing. The Grub menu followed and I was able to boot into the other Operating Systems though. But is there any way I can do this neatly?
I was able to do it perfectly with Grub Legacy with the method described at http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Multiple_OS_Installation
But I really want to move onto Grub 2.
Can anyone help with any solutions?
Thanks!
I wanted a situation of having a separate boot partition that is not associated with any installed OS. I wanted Grub 2. There was a beautifully detailed instruction page for Grub Legacy in one of the Ubuntuguide pages but not for Grub 2.
I have 2 hard disks. So I wanted to set it up in such a way that I can boot into either hard disk and get the Grub 2 menu.
I did the following.
On my 1st hard disk, I partitioned as
/dev/sda1 - Grub
/dev/sda2 - Xp
/dev/sda3 - NTFS - (for unforeseen Primary Partition needs)
/dev/sda4 - Extended
/dev/sda5 - Data
On my 2nd hard disk, I partitioned as
/dev/sdb1 - Grub
Unpartitioned Space (for unforeseen Primary Partition needs)
/dev/sdb4 - Extended
/dev/sdb5 - Swap
/dev/sdb6 - Lubuntu
/dev/sdb7 - Arch
/dev/sdb8 - DATA
(I share this computer with my family. So I had to make room for them. That's the reason for the unforeseen needs).
My computer has only 256 MB RAM. So I just did a few things from the Ubuntu Live CD.
The things in the order I did.
1. Install Xp in /dev/sda2
2. Install Lubuntu in /dev/sdb6
3. Install Arch in /dev/sdb7
(Both Lubuntu and Arch had their bootloaders in the partitions and not MBR).
4. Installed Grub 2 into both /dev/sda and /dev/sdb from Ubuntu Live CD terminal (Ubuntu was dead-slow). But grub-mkconfig did not work from Live CD.
5. Rebooted into /dev/sda. Therw was no grub.cfg yet. So booted into Lubuntu from the Grub command line. Created the grub.cfg's for both /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1.
6. Now when I reboot into either hard disk, I'm able to get a Grub 2 menu from which I can boot into any of the 3 OS's (Windows Xp, Lubuntu or Arch).
Now, the issue.
I wanted to make certain that the Grub 2 was totally independent of any OS (that was the whole point, so I could repartition and install new distros without worrying about messing the other OS's). And since the Lubuntu was the only one which I had associated with Grub so far (creating the grub.cfg files), I formatted the Lubuntu partition and rebooted.
Jeez! I was getting an error message saying that a parition (mentioned with UUID) was missing. The Grub menu followed and I was able to boot into the other Operating Systems though. But is there any way I can do this neatly?
I was able to do it perfectly with Grub Legacy with the method described at http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Multiple_OS_Installation
But I really want to move onto Grub 2.
Can anyone help with any solutions?
Thanks!