Chainloading openSUSE from Win 7 MBR.

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Is it possible to boot openSUSE from the Win 7 bootloader?

I have previosuly done a similar thing with Debian by writing the Boot sector to the /boot partition and then chainloading that from the Win 7 MBR. Something along the lines of:

Boot to live DVD
my_windows_part=/dev/sda1
my_boot_part=/dev/sda5
mkdir /media/win
mount $my_windows_part /media/win
dd if=$my_boot_part of=/media/win/linux.bin bs=512 count=1

Boot to Windows Recovery prompt
bcdedit /create /d “Linux” /application BOOTSECTOR
bcdedit /set {ID} device partition=c:
bcdedit /set {ID} path \linux.bin
bcdedit /displayorder {ID} /addlast

Is it possible to something similar with openSUSE?

Thanks,
Nick

2

The generic MBR doesn’t chainload anything. It justs loads and runs the code in the boot sector of the active partition, in your case the Windows boot manager. Yes, it’s possible. I’m not a big fan of this method, but we still have a couple passionate “bootinists” here.

3

Yes. I am doing that. However, your use of “MBR” in the thread title is wrong and potentially confusing.

4

Fair point, I should have more correctly said Win 7 boot sector not Win 7 MBR.