I have a multiboot system where openSUSE 11.4 has GRUB installed in its root partition and controls the booting of Win 7, Fedoras and Ubuntus. I don’t remember the exact wording in the installation menu but booting from both the root partition and MBR are enabled. This way I can boot into Win 7 as well as opensuse. The system has 2 hard drives.
How do I install openSUSE 12.1 Milestone 1 as a new “member” OS just like the Fedoras and Ubuntus without messing up GRUB…
Option 1: GRUB boot loader in 12.1’s own root partition only and disable Win 7’s MBR?
Option 2: Enable BOTH Grub (in 12.1’s root partition) AND MBR?
A third option would be to have /boot in its own partition, then select “boot from /boot partition”. Before installing a new distro/version, BACKUP /boot. After the installation completes, add the stanzas for the desired OS’s from /boot/grub/menu.lst from the saved copy to the new /boot/grub/menu.lst. DO NOT format /boot during the install or you’ll lose the prior kernels and boot items.
I just installed 12.1 Milestone 2 into a new partition in a different hard disk, i.e. not in the same hard drive as
openSUSE 11.4. When it comes to choosing the boot loader location, I selected the default settings:
Boot from MBR is enabled
Boot from the root partition is disabled
After removing the installation disk and reboot, the system boots into openSUSE 12.1 (default).
I then edited its /boot/grub/menu.lst file based on the suggestion in an article published June 16/11
by swerdna (title is “How to boot other versions of openSUSE…” or something like that):
title openSUSE 11.4 by symlinks
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb5 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x317
initrd /boot/initrd
I only had to do minor changes to the stanza of Windows. Now I have a multi-multi boot system!
P/S: How do I change/select the repositories in order to do an online update of openSUSE 12.1?
You can select the preferred repositories using Yast (the process is simpler in 12.1 than in 11.4). I assume you’re running the KDE version of 12.1, in which case accessing Yast should be straightforward. If you are running the Gnome version, you’ll have to install “libgnomesu” and its dependencies in order to get Yast to work properly (and you’ll probably want to install “gnome-shell” and all its extensions except for the one referencing “xrandr” in order to get a more modern desktop).
I am using 12.1 KDE. Yes I do know how to select repositories via YAST, it’s just that I thought I had seen some recent post where caf4926 suggests using Factories repos to update. I did not see Factories repos in my 12.1 installation,
that’s why I was asking. I might be wrong.
