Trying tripleboot openSUSE 13.1 (new), old 13.1 (old) and 12.3. GRUB2 doesn't recognize old 13.1

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I have one hd with partitions for openSUSE 13.1 (sda1) and old 12.3 (sda2). I made new a partition (sda5) and installed 13.1 there. sda1 has the boot flag. At boot GRUB2 only shows entries for new 13.1 and 12.3, not for the old 13.1.

At installation process I mistakenly chose: “Booting: Boot from MBR is enabled, “/” partition is disabled”. I used Yast2 Bootloader to reconfigure Grub at sda1 so it would recognizes the other instances of SUSE (Probe for other OS’s checked, Boot from MBR unchecked). The old 13.1 wasn’t in dropdown menu in “Default startup option”. New 13.1 and 12.3 were. Same when rebooting: it doesn’t show entires for old 13.1

I have tried to use Yast2 bootloader to install grub to different partitions (and changed to bootflag), tried to check “Boot from MBR” also or only it, but always same result.

I can boot to 12.3 and managed to boot to old 13.1 by booting from installation disk, aborting installation and choosing “Boot installed system”. If I run Yast2 bootloader either from old 13.1 or 12.3 all SUSE versions are shown in dropdown menu. After intallation and rebooting Grub still doesn’t show old 13.1.

I run “grub2-install /dev/sda5”, “grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg”. But same results.

The file /boot/grub2/grub.cfg at sda1 has all SUSE entries including old 13.1. Link: http://paste.opensuse.org/99204635 . The new 13.1 entires are at the end, other 13.1 entries are the old ones. I made comments to pinpoint those.

Any ideas are greatly appreciated.

fdisk -l
Laite Käynn Alku Loppu Lohkot Id Järjestelmä
/dev/sda1 * 2048 48828415 24413184 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 48828416 97656831 24414208 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 97656832 105859071 4101120 82 Linux-sivutus / Solaris
/dev/sda4 105861118 976771071 435454977 5 Laajennettu
/dev/sda5 105861120 893163519 393651200 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 893165568 976752639 41793536 83 Linux

  • sda1 and sda5 use brtfs, others ext4.

lsblk while running 12.3

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 465,8G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 23,3G 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 23,3G 0 part /
├─sda3 8:3 0 3,9G 0 part [SWAP]
├─sda4 8:4 0 1K 0 part
├─sda5 8:5 0 375,4G 0 part /data
└─sda6 8:6 0 39,9G 0 part

2

Please, for a better communication, from now on use CODE tags around your copied/pasted computer texts. It is the # button in the tool bar of the post editor.

3

I managed to solve this issue. First I had to run grub2-install:

sudo grub2-install /dev/sda
sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

That will find the old13.1 which Yast2 bootloader couldn’t and 12.3… but no new 13.1. installation. I had to copy it’s entries from new 13.1’s (sda5) grub.cfg and paste them to old 13.1’s (sda1) /etc/grub.d/40_custom -file. Now the grub menu shows all the installations :slight_smile:

So summary:

  • Yast2 bootloader didn’t recognize old 13.1 installation at all when executed at new 13.1 (wasn’t listed Yast2 bootloader’s default startup option -menu).
  • It recognized all installations when executed at old 13.1 or 12.3 but at startup grub doesn’t display old 13.1 -entries.
  • grub2-install didn’t recognize new 13.1 installation.

If somebody has suggestions for possible reasons behind these or how to make them work without having to add entries manually I would be interested to know.

4

I’d speculate the old and new 13.1 look the same to the software.

Also you did not say of EFI which has it own unique problems with installs under the same name/ver/OS

5

hi,

on this pc is a similar triple boot set up

after a new install or kernel change on the none booting partitions,
the grub cmd must be run from the booting partition after the change, for it to
be show on the next boot

is your case that would be /dev/sda1 * 2048 48828415 24413184 83 Linux partition

suggestion
after a major change on a none booting partition

  1. reboot to /dev/sda1 os
  2. at the login screen, select terminal boot
  3. login as root and run cmd grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
  4. reboot again to see new/changed os in menu

anyone have a more efficient method?

cheers

6

That’s what I thought of since both Yast2 bootloader and and grub2-install have no problem at detecting the 12.3 partition.
There’s no EFI on my machine.