[NTLUG:Discuss] questions about intalling Grub and MBR

[Bob Netherton]

On Mon, 2007-04-16 at 17:05 -0500, Ed Leach wrote:
> William,
> 
> Thanks. I did as you suggest and the machine booted to an MBR on 
> /dev/sdb 

I think the whole notion of changing disk boot order and using
GRUB device redirection, while very interesting, is amazingly
confusing.

Keep the boot order the same for all OSes.   This means one GRUB
in the MBR, and never overwrite it (or always overwrite it - it's
OK because you have a bunch of other grubs running out there).

When you install Linux, only install GRUB in the boot sector of the
root partition.   In fact, go back and fix all of your existing
Linux installs.   If things go very bad, a CDROM with grub will
allow you do to find one of your OSes (chainload).

Your main GRUB should have the stanzas for that OS plus
chainload entries for all of your other distributions.   Keep a copy of
this in a shared FAT32 so that you can add it to your new menu.lst or
grub.conf.

This means that you have to be pretty disciplined about keeping the boot
order the same.   Some BIOS probes assume the current / is the boot
disk, but look at device.map and fix up as necessary.



Bob