openSUSE / Fedora dual boot problem

English Install/Boot/Login
1

After asking on both this forum and the Fedora forum, I felt it was safe enough to install a copy of Fedora on my working-well openSUSE drive. I have a 1 TB drive, partitioned as follows:

partition1 : 100G openSUSE /
partition2 : 100G Fedora /
partition3 : 50G Swap for both
partition4 : 340G openSUSE /home
partition5 : 340G Fedora /home

I did an install of Fedora 13, was VERY careful to set up the installer to put it’s files in the partitions I wanted, although I did let it mark the partition as active, feeling it may have to boot during the installation process.

I had grub installed in the root of the partition rather than the MBR for both systems.

When Fedora finished installing, I rebooted the system only to find that it wouldn’t. I got the dreaded “No Boot Device” message.

So, I started the 5 hour process of booting with the parted magic disk, booting with a Gentoo live disk (only one around), monkeying with the install parts of the openSUSE and Fedora disks, swapping drives to Windows to download openSUSE Live CDs (yes, both) and searching the forums and various other web sites for some poor bloke who did the same stupid whatever it was I did, and finally, as I was using fdisk on the Gnome Live CD, I noticed the warning message stating that fdisk would not work on a drive that was partitioned with the GPD format.

Notice that I have 5 partitions? That is not a typo on my part, I used the GPD format when I set it up so I could do what I did without using “imitation” partitions.

When I used parted (the command line editor on the Gnome Live CD) to change the active partition, everything started working again! Well, at least I can boot the openSUSE system, the most important thing.

It is my suspicion that the Fedora install uses fdisk to do it’s work, and fdisk just mucks up a GPD formatted disk. Not the information, just the part of the drive that holds the partition table. Perhaps just the flags section. I don’t know enough to say with any certainty.

I didn’t change the drives parameters during the installation of Fedora, so I don’t know of it even offers the GPD partitioning option. If not, I can understand how this sort of thing could happen.

Still…

So now all I have to do is make the grub menu, the one installed with openSUSE, boot the Fedora installation on the next partition. Seems simple enough.

This is not a swipe at Fedora, I post it only because I hope I can save somebody from spending the hours I did tracking down a problem.

Bart

2

Hello,

I have 2 FC13 / OpenSuSE dual boot setups currently. First recommendation, just delete OpenSUSE … :). Just kidding … and venting a little frustration … I am very disappointed in the lack of quality in the last 3, perhaps 4 releases, which is the only reason I have FC13 installed. I installed it on a whim after reading an interesting review. I have spent a small fraction of the time on FC13 as on OpenSUSE … and everything that is important to me works … OpenSUSE … cairo-dock still does not work correctly … m4a/aac playback broken in banshee and rhythymbox, gnome-color-manager … will not ever work in an OpenSUSE release for lack of argyl cms. The alternative media easy 1 click is just as unreliable as it has been since it’s inception. It might work for you … it might not.

Actually, … come to think of it … I’m not kidding. I don’t know why I am continuing to waste my time trying to get SuSE to work correctly. SuSE’s boot manager install is very nice … which allows you to boot into FC13 from a pretty boot menu … very valuable indeed. Anyway, if you still want to use both OSes, I would recommend SuSE grub simply because the graphical install tool is very nice and it is usable to repair grub if you have a little know-how. The FC13 boot is a little picky … the first two entries in /boot/grub/menu.lst (grub installed by the OpenSUSE boot loader tool):

##CWight
title Fedora (2.6.33.6-147.fc13.i686)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.33.6-147.fc13.i686 ro root=/dev/mapper/dolphin-root2 rd_LVM_LV=dolphin/root2 rd_MD_UUID=224aa24a:8d2b2d73:4fa6bae4:438fc5b1 rd_LVM_LV=dolphin/swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us showopts rhgb quiet
initrd /initramfs-2.6.33.6-147.fc13.i686.img

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.3
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.34-12-default root=/dev/dolphin/root3 resume=/dev/dolphin/swap splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31a
initrd /initrd-2.6.34-12-default

Good luck!

3

oooops … just to state the obvious … don’t use my paths /dev/dolphin/… blah blah … I posted to show you a working set of boot options to FC13.

I hope I have not confused you …

Take care,

cwight

4

lol! 10-4 on the frustration. I did consider it, Fedora that is.

Actually, I ended up with adding the Fedora install, through the System Configuration tool, to the Suse grub menu, and just chainloaded it. The Fedora menu.lst is set at zeros so it doesn’t even show.

I like openSUSE. It does all I need. It does it well. I just hate myself. That’s why I took on this Fedora task! :slight_smile: Next, I’m going to do Slackware!

Bart

5

Come on Bart … if you really hate yourself … don’t mess with slackware … go straight to gentoo … or better yet … roll your own linux …

There is a “linux from scratch” guide out on the net somewhere … a must read for that masocistic little penguin lurking within us all!

All jokes aside, I am really impressed with FC13. I have not worked with anything from Red Hat in a few years … and it has improved! I really hope the good folk at SuSE … (not to be confused with openSUSE/Novell/Utah/breakItWare/etc. , I mean the Geman dudes) … will take a good look at FC13 and remember what made SuSE was such an awesome product back in the day …

#!/bin/user/bites;slurp||spit|sed ‘s/(.)urg.(\ .*)$/\1YES!\2/ig’ > NOW