Total uninstall to start again

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

For various reasons I want to completely uninstall Suse 11.3, including the stuff in GRUB, and start again, without upsetting my other distro which is also in the GRUB options. This so I can do a fresh clean inatall when I’m ready.

I know I could just reformat the relevant partitions, but I guess that doesn’t deal with the GRUB issue?:\

#2

I don’t know an automatic way to do this and perhaps someone else will come in with that solution. If you are using the openSUSE installation to boot the other Linux installs (all of which use the same Grub Legacy version as openSUSE) then boot into the other Linux, mount the root partition where the openSUSE /boot/grub/menu.lst file is located and save it elsewhere, perhaps in more than one location just in case. Look at it to make sure all entries are included. Reinstall openSUSE into the very same partitions as before. Consider not formatting your home are unless you think it is corrupted somehow. Then, after the install, manually merge the menu.lst entries of your other Linux installs yourself (as root) with two editors open and doing a copy from one and a paste into the other for those entries you want to reuse that represent different Linux installations on your computer.

Thank You,

#3

How you proceed depends on how Grub is set up at the moment and on the order of installation of the two distros. Be careful not to uninstall openSUSE if it is openSUSE’s boot menu that appears as first thing during the boot process.

Can we have some more information please.

  • what is the other distro and what is it’s version number, e.g. Ubuntu 9.4 or whatever
  • which was installed first
  • when you boot, do you see the boot splash/motif/bootmenu provided by openSUSE or the motif provided by the “other” distro?
  • is windows in the mix as well?
#4

Once again swerdna’s advice rings very true here, so read and learn from a master. His mention of Grub got me thinking about a script file in this forum that can identify booting elements in your partition setup. It is called findgrub, written by another master here please_try_again. Here is the link:

Looking for Grub and Windows bootloader in all partitions.

Message #69 has version 2.3 you can download and run directly. You could post the output from findgrub here in the forum. If this helps in any way, don’t forget to thank please_try_again for his fine script file.

Thank You,