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View Full Version : [ubuntu] is there a way to have an option upon which drive to boot from?



Cyberpawz
June 13th, 2012, 03:37 PM
Before I go forward, I am looking at creating a boot option upon start up, either the OS on my laptop, or the installer drive I have on my laptop.

Basically I want to make it so after a few seconds (5 or so) the laptop will automatically go to the installed OS, otherwise you choose to go to the installing partition.

I hope this makes sense...

oldfred
June 13th, 2012, 05:20 PM
Is this another hard drive or flash drive?

You can add custom boot entries into 40_custom to chain to another drive, partition, install or even ISO. You can use grub customizer to change boot times easily or manually edit the grub file.

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub
# after any change run this to update grub.cfg (menu)
sudo update-grub

HOWTO: Grub Customizer Updated for grub 1.99
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/grub-customizer-2-2-released-and-installation-instructions-included.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1664134

How to: Create a Customized GRUB2 Screen that is Maintenance Free.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1542338

This will boot an ISO from a hard drive.
ISO Booting with Grub 2 from Hard drive - drs305
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1549847
Boot ISO from harddrive. To install it would have to be different partition
[SOLVED] Using grub 2 to boot an iso off hard drive
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1535864

You can just chainload to another MBR, but boot drive in grub is always hd0, and if a removeable drive number may change. If it does you can manually edit grub as you boot to change.

Add entry below
gksudo gedit /etc/grub.d/40_custom
Then do:
sudo update-grub


menuentry " Chainboot hd1" {
set root=(hd1)
chainloader +1
}