Adding openSUSE to GRUB 2

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I’ve been running Ubuntu Lucid lately (it had been a while since I used U), and while it’s a nice release I’m ready to return to good old openSUSE (as I always do). I’ve been busy with work recently but it seems to have slowed a bit and I’d like to install 11.3RC2 on my spare partition (over an unused Linux Mint install). However, I need to be able to access my Ubuntu install at least until I have openSUSE set up to my liking, which probably won’t be till after 11.3 release (yes, I’ll have to go through this again, but hey, I don’t actually mind). The problem of course is that Ubuntu uses GRUB2, so it won’t be recognized by openSUSE’s legacy Grub.

So, I’m guessing my best course of action would be to install openSUSE and customise the bootloader installation so that Ubuntu’s GRUB2 stays in the MBR, then try to add openSUSE to Ubuntu’s GRUB2 menu. Does anyone know if this is would work? Specifically, has anyone dealt with this issue before? I’ve never worked with GRUB2 so I’m a bit in the dark here.

Thanks!

2

In Ub
do

sudo update-grub
3

That sounds right, but where would I install openSUSE’s bootloader? Or would I install it at all?

4

To root
If it breaks Ub Grub and you can’t get to Ub to update grub 2
Use the Ub CD and do this

  • Open a terminal and type

$ sudo fdisk -l

* Now, you need to remember which device listed is your linux distribution, for reference, /dev/sda1 will be used. Now we need to mount the filesystem to /mnt

$ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

* Now mount the rest of your devices

$ sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev

* Now chroot into your system

$ sudo chroot /mnt

*

  When that is done you need to run update-grub to create the configuration file.

$ update-grub

*

  To install GRUB 2 to the MBR, next you need to run grub-install /dev/sda

$ grub-install /dev/sda

And your done
Then following any suse kernel update - just run

sudo update-grub