[NTLUG:Discuss] GRUB2 and multiboot

[Leroy Tennison]

On 01/29/2013 12:21 AM, Ralph Green wrote:
> Leroy,
>    Grub2 config files are not nearly as easy to edit as Grub1.
>
>    Hopefully, his BIOS(or UEFI) will let him select the drive to boot
> from.  Until you know, it is hard to say how to proceed.   By default,
> recent SuSEs have set up drives for me using their UUID.  So, it will
> probably boot fine with a second or third drive in the system.  You
> may not have to rerun grub2 at all, but maybe I don't know what you
> are trying to accomplish.
> Good luck,
> Ralph
>
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>
Things worked quite well after I got an education along the way. Knowing 
about the traditional boot.ini edit, I intended to use it only to find 
that Windows 7 (actually starting with Vista) no longer has that file.  
Sensing something was wrong I began my web research.  Found a page (the 
following is a variant) which explained everything:

http://www.iceflatline.com/2009/09/how-to-dual-boot-windows-7-and-linux-using-bcdedit/

If it no longer exists search for

     windows 7 bcdedit boot linux

and you should find variations.  This page has a lot of "preamble" about 
installing Linux which you can probably skip, search for the word 
'bootsector' and you will be at the right place.  You basically still 
copy the Linux boot sector to Windows using dd and then use bcdedit to 
set up the boot entry.  The only issue with the instructions was an 
ambiguity I mis-interpreted.  When you set up a new entry with bcdedit 
it creates a long ID much like a UUID.  The instructions referred to 
that as "{ID}".  I assumed you eliminated the curly braces when you used 
the created ID, I was wrong, you include them on the command line.  Even 
though I had installed Linux on a different PC where there was only one 
hard drive and put it in a PC with three hard drives (not as the 
primary), it worked.  There was an initial scare when the screen flashed 
"Missing operating system" but then SuSE 12.2 came up and worked just fine.