hello,
I have installed elive on one part of my hard drive (grub 1.5 set on MBR, -took the default option-, plus there is a separate partition for /boot) and I want now to re-install opensuse 11.2 on another part.
Upon installation dialog, what should I choose to make a dual boot possible? grub should be enabled on MBR or on /root ?
Can I add directly the other system boot options (and in this case, how?)
If I can only do this upon post install, how should I proceed to add the other system boot options, once I am started from opensuse?
for example adding the entry :
title Elive
root (hd0,6)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.30.9-elive-686 root=UUID=74adc633-793d-4909-93fc-3b1d71c8adb7 vga=791 splash=silent resume=swap:/dev/hda1 quiet rootfstype=ext4
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.30.9-elive-686
in /boot/grub/menu.lst on opensuse root partition will do the trick or there is something else that I should be aware of? (this real entry seems similar to what I see needed in SDB:The Boot Manager Grub - openSUSE )
thanks a lot in advance!
Whichever distro you use to install grub to the MBR, that distro becomes the master or controlling OS. That is, grub will go to that distro’s /boot directory for the menu.lst file. So your first decision is which distro do you want to control the boot, Elive or openSUSE?
It is not advisable to share a /boot partition unless you really know what you are doing and are willing to manually maintain the grub installation and control files.
There is also a potential issue if your Elive /boot partition is ext4 like your root partition. openSUSE uses grub1 (or “grub legacy”) which cannot read ext4. This means that if you use openSUSE’s grub, and /boot is ext4, then you must use the “chainloading” method in the menu.lst boot stanza for Elive rather than the “direct” method (which is the syntax you now have in Elive). If /boot is ext3, you can use either method and can boot either distro from the other, that is, this is not an issue in that case.
So which distro do you want to control grub?
Thanks a lot for your valuable answer!
your explanation about /boot partition limitation with ext4 that I chose as filesystem for root, sheds some good light on the fact that elive asked me to create a tiny separate partition for /boot, which has been set to ext3. A sensible decision, that one.
This means I should be able to boot from one or the other distro.
I don’t intend to use the same /boot partition, /boot will not be installed separately from root for opensuse (only /home).
If I have to chose which distro to control the grub, it would be Opensuse. But I have already elive installed and I took the option to install a section of grub on the MBR. Does this mean I already made my choice?
If on the opensuse installer I choose to enable the grub on MBR, will it give opensuse the control without any issue on using it to boot on elive as well? (or should I keep only grub enabled on the /boot partition as option?).
After that, I think I should be ready to proceed!
If you want SuSE to control grub, then yes you need the SuSE installation to re-install grub in the MBR. The grub in the MBR contains a pointer to the partition where menu.lst is. Currently that pointer is to the Elive /boot partition. When you reinstall it from SuSE, it will point to SuSE’s root partition.
The SuSE installation will also try to find the Elive boot setup and add a stanza to its menu.lst for booting Elive. If you only installed Elive’s grub to the MBR but not also to the /boot partition boot sector, SuSE’s grub must use the direct method.
My suggestion is to enter the installation boot setup dialog, click on the Boot Loader Installation tab and under Boot Loader Location check that the MBR is selected. On the Section Management screen, highlight the entry for Elive (it may only be titled “Linux Other” or something like that), and click on edit. There you will see the grub syntax that the installer suggests. If you want to see exactly how it looks in menu.lst, click on Other (bottom-right), click on Edit Configuration Files, and on the next screen click on the pull-down at top to display the proposed menu.lst itself. Keep in mind that possibly the exact grub syntax may be different than what you have in Elive, this is usually just a different way of doing the same thing.
If after installing SuSE there is a problem booting Elive, it is usually easy to fix that. In that case, you would need to post back here the contents of the SuSE menu.lst, also /etc/grub.conf, and also the output of “fdisk -l” (all as root).
I rinstalled OpenSUSE with grub enabled on MBR and /boot, and checked the configuration options Yast proposed : it did not find the boot options of Elive directly itself, but if one knew exactly what he needs to put, he could set it up during installation through the pointers you gave me, very elegant.
I had the text of the menu.lst from Elive on an email, so I choose to add it post-install through Yast : the syntax was almost the same but with quite different boot options from one distro to another (I only added some indents to match the already available boot options, I don’t know if this has any importance). That was all, now upon boot I get all the options needed to dual boot!
Thank you for your support ! I feel a little wiser now as well 
You’re quite welcome, glad it worked out . . .