open suse yast boot menu

Story: HelpTotal Replies: 2
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number6x

Aug 06, 2007
5:33 AM EDT
Yast has an option to generate a new boot menu based on your current drives.

alternately, booting with the open suse live cd will give you a 'repair' option that will analyze your set up.

Suse does not know about the Ubuntu install because it did not exist when Suse was installed. The same would be true for Ubuntu if you had installed it first. The grub file that gets generated when you install only knows about your system at the time of installation.

Yast can be a little cryptic, but it does have the options you need to automagically generate a new grub file.

The suse e-mail listserves are the most active place for suse support.
hkwint

Aug 07, 2007
2:15 AM EDT
Sadly, I'm not that up to date with Ubuntu nor Suse, but if nothing else works, you could try it the 'old-fashioned' way:

As root (sudo), open a text editor (kwrite or something should do), and edit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Two lines are important: # By default, boot the first entry. default 0

# Fallback to the second entry. fallback 1
This says the first item of what follows (numbered 0, but the first item) is booted by default, but if that won't work, it will fall back to item 1 (numbered one ,but the second item).

If item nr. 0 (first) is Ubuntu and item nr. 1 (second) is Suse, and you would like to boot Suse by default, make it default to 1 and fallback to 1.

Grub (and its user) might also be confused because Ubuntu and Suse both have their own /boot/grub/menu.lst files (on different partitions) I suppose. In the ideal world, both should be the same.

What you therefore, could check is this: Look at the menu.lst file, it will say something like: kernel (hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18.8-0.3 root=/dev/hda3 What could happen, is the (hd0,2) part isn't there. If it's not, GRUB only sees /boot/vmlinuz.... and almost has to 'guess' on which partition those boot directory is. I think in this case, hda1 is the resume partition, so let's say SUse is on hda2 (hd0,1 in GRUB) and Ubuntu is on hda3 (hd0,2 in GRUB), then it should look a bit like this: default 0 fallback 1

#For booting SUse title SUse root (hd0,1) kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz...SUse_kernel initrd (hd0,1)/initrd_Suse

#For booting Ubuntu title Ubuntu root (hd0,2) kernel (hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz...Ubuntu_kernel initrd (hd0,2)/initrd_Ubuntu


I hope any of this helps, and good luck. Remember, _looking_ at the menu.lst file is always a good thing, and will increase your understanding. A common pitfall is GRUB numbering: 0 refers to a and 1 to b etc, while 0 refers to the first partition, 1 to the second etc.
tracyanne

Aug 07, 2007
5:26 PM EDT
TorchFire, my friend on the yuku board has asked me to pass on her thanks.

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