Perpetual newb, only as clever as people helping me ;), so please be gentle with me
I have PC with XP and couple of other distros installed.
I want to try openSUSE, so have downloaded and burned DVD with openSUSE13.2
I am using separate boot partition (using legacy grub).
I have prepared specific separate partition for openSUSE.
Can I install openSUSE to the specific prepared partition, without affecting either XP, or other distros and without messing up my grub boot set-up?
What is the best command to add to menu.lst to fire openSUSE?
Well grub one is really not supported directly any more. it is there but I don’t think you can select it and would have to anually configure it.
If you wish to use what ever OS is in control now using grub 1 then from the openSUSE install put nothing in the MBR and put grub2 in the partition that contains /boot. Usually root partition. You can specify the current swap partition and if you are only playing and don’t plan to store important things in home you really don’t need a home partition.
> Can I install openSUSE to the specific prepared partition, without
> affecting either XP, or other distros and without messing up my grub
> boot set-up?
Tell the installer, boot section, to install grub on openSUSE root partition, and make sure (look in all the screens) that it does not write generic mbr code nor specific grub code to mbr.
Then in your existing master grub, chain load the new one.
> What is the best command to add to menu.lst to fire openSUSE?
Examples:
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows 7
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
title openSUSE Factory (/dev/sda9) via chainloader
rootnoverify (hd0,8)
chainloader +1
On 2015-09-17 14:16, gogalthorp wrote:
>
> Well grub one is really not supported directly any more. it is there but
> I don’t think you can select it and would have to anually configure it.
Well, no, it is an already existing grub 1 from another already
installed Linux in another partition. openSUSE partition needs know/do
nothing about it.
Thank you,
It was indeed this business of damaging existing mbr that worried me (I have messed it up before, so I know that whilst it can be recovered from, it is better avoided ;))
OK, will try that.
Thank you
I don’t have swap partition
I am not using home partition, because all my stuff (important things :)) are on NAS, totally separate from any PC or any OS I am using or playing with.
Thank you - I agree with this one.
openSUSE needs to know nothing about my existing grub partition (it is down to me to make this partition work with all the OS I have on my PC)
My only concern was avoiding screwups when installing SUSE, that would cause problem to either mbr or existing grub partition.
Well yes I guess I did not say it well Yast no longer supports grub1 you have to set things up manually and of course once installed you must notify the OS in control of the boot the change. this may depend on exactly what distro is being used.