GRUB2 Multi Boot - Fedora not found.

[Habanero101]

Hi guys, I'm new here, so please forgive me for any errors.

I have been using Ubuntu 32-bit on my PC since 12.04 LTS, so I have a reasonable understanding of the system.

I have set up a multi boot system on my laptop, here's the details;
3 flavors of windows (xp 32 bit, 7 64 bit, and 8 64 bit) all being loaded by windows' default loader.
fedora 18 64 bit
ubuntu 12-10 64 bit.

Grub2 sees the windows loader (one grub entry), so windows versions loads via chain loading.

After installing fedora 18 fedora and the windows loader showed up in GRUB

After installing ubuntu 12-10, fedora disappeared from grub, however windows boot loader is still fine.

My problem is getting fedora 18 back into grub so I can boot into fedora.

I have tried

sudo update-grub

also, I have tried Boot-Repair;
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && (sudo boot-repair &)

and used the advanced repair.

Last, I tried linux-secure-12.10-64bit.iso

I have come to the conclusion that I need to manually edit grub and insert the fedora boot into the grub file.
My problem is now which file to edit and what to edit in it. Any examples would be most helpful, so it can help me edit my file.

Can you start by point out which file I need to edit?
I found these files:
/boot/grub/grub.cfg but it said DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE
/etc/default/grub

and this folder:
/etc/grub.d
which has the file README; which says;

The number namespace in-between is configurable by system installer and/or
administrator. For example, you can add an entry to boot another OS as
01_otheros, 11_otheros, etc, depending on the position you want it to occupy in
the menu; and then adjust the default setting via /etc/default/grub.

This is exactly what I want to do, but I have no idea what to do.

Please help me.
Thanks.

[monkeybrain2012]

Sorry, this may be a stupid question, did you mount the Fedora partition before you update grub? Make sure that it is mounted.

[Habanero101]

thanks monkeybrain2012.

Don't I look stupid!

I thought whether the drives were mounted or not shouldn't matter, obiviously I was wrong.
I mounted the fedora partition and did sudo update-grub, reboot and fedora and all my other OSes were there.

Thanks again.

[ajgreeny]

Is this mount requirement something new? In the past I have had a 5 OS system and grub 2 from ubuntu always found other OSs when I ran the update-grub command without mounting the partitions.

Perhaps it is related to Fedora using LVM partitions when installed in the default manner, if that is how the OP installed it?

[oldfred]

I have seen a lot of default installs of Fedora with LVM. Generally Ubuntu does not have LVM driver and grub cannot use os-prober to see Fedora as it cannot mount the LVM. And os-prober seems to only work if the LVM is already mounted.
But I thought Boot-Repair added the LVM driver and made it work?

Not required for most other systems with standard ext family of formatted partitions. While grub has drivers for many other formats like btrfs, sometimes the same issue may occur.

[monkeybrain2012]

Is this mount requirement something new? In the past I have had a 5 OS system and grub 2 from ubuntu always found other OSs when I ran the update-grub command without mounting the partitions.

Perhaps it is related to Fedora using LVM partitions when installed in the default manner, if that is how the OP installed it?

I don't know. I dual boot Ubuntu and Fedora and if I remember correctly Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 + Fedora16 didn't need mounting but since 11.04 dual booting with Fedora17 does require it. Haven't upgraded to Fedora18 yet.