The editor you invoked is VIM (an improved VI); VI was designed for programmers, and is still extensively used by such plus old systems geeks who pre-date gui’s (who me???). It is very fast to use, once you know the syntax and keystrokes. But difficult for new or typical users. Not worth it to learn (unless you plan on cutting code), and, caution, if you get into it as root and you could inadvertently change something. There are other built-in command line editors (like, er, “ed”), but again, programmer tools.
You should be able to get into a graphical editor; per the ls output you posted back earlier, the file has root only read-write permissions. If you tried gedit, you must have installed gnome. From the terminal line not as root, you would type:
>gtksu gedit
gtksu (in KDE, it’s kdesu) runs a program as root, but does so through the gnome mechanisms. Running gedit as root (#gedit) also works, but >gtksu is preferred.
If for some reason you have trouble with that, you can easily edit the file in the terminal. And, this is good to know should the occasion arise that X won’t start and you need to edit a config file from the command line. So I’ll include this:
Check to see is you have nano or pico already installed; just invoke it from the prompt (>nano or >pico). If you don’t have one of these, go into YaST Software Mangement and install nano. Both are very nifty, fairly intuitive, command line editors. To edit menu.lst, all you need to do is:
>su
<enter root password>
#cd /boot/grub
#nano menu.lst
In nano, you edit interactively using the keyboard; move around with the arrow keys. The commands you’ll need are shown at the bottom (or you can enter the help facility), and they all are invoked by depressing the Ctrl key and applicable letter. A carriage return at the end of a line creates a new empty line, like needed to add the above. Then Ctrl-o to save the file. To scroll through what you’ve done, just:
#more menu.lst
Re my prev post, let me also suggest that you add two “map” lines not just one, thus:
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
Probably only one line is required, but I’ve also seen it done using two; safer that way.
Finally, you can test adding the map command without editing the menu.lst file. When you boot to the SuSE menu, hit Escape and you will be taken out of the graphical interface to a text interface. Choose the windows title (move with arrow keys) and hit “e”, and grub will display the full stanza. Position the cursor at the top line and type “O” (capital “o”), and a new line will be inserted. Then type “e” and grub presents a edit prompt; type in your command and hit return. Repeat for the second line. When you’re finished, type “b” and grub will boot from that stanza. When you find what works, you’ll know exactly what you need to add to menu.lst. To return from the stanza to the grub menu, hit Escape.
We’re making the move as a family and are going to be trying out a variety of Distros, OpenSUSE being the first. (for more info check out The Bray’s Blog).
