How easily will Arch configure my existing OS's to boot when installin

Ecky · 2011-11-12 00:33:24

I have a machine that's currently got win 7, opensuse 11.4 and debian squeeze installed

/dev/sda1 windoze
/dev/sda2 opensuse
/dev/sdb1 debian

Other partitions on the same drives are used for storage and the suse uses an nfs exported /home

In the next week or so I'll be wiping the suse 11.4 (Tumbleweed) to install 12.1 which is coming out in 4 days, I've tried a basic arch and kde install on an old laptop and liked it enough that when I do the suse I also wanna add another partition and install arch to it

My question is, would there be a lot of fooling around to get my other OS's booting after installing arch?

I'll be backing up my current menu.lst obviously but it'd just be nice to know if the arch installer will reliably detect and configure the existing stuff without too much hassle before I start, I don't get much spare time to mess with my own computers so I need to plan it out as best I can and hopefully get it right first time

lagagnon · 2011-11-12 00:51:20

Ecky wrote:

My question is, would there be a lot of fooling around to get my other OS's booting after installing arch?

Grub will not auto-detect your other stuff. You will have to edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file to add the other distros you wish to boot. It is not particularly difficult, see here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … install.29

Saving an old menu.lst file as you plan to do will help a lot.

Ecky · 2011-11-12 01:19:26

Thanks for that bit of info there lagagnon, helps me plan the order in which to do things, was gonna install arch last as I can run through the whole suse setup/after-setup-config pretty quickly but it might be simpler to do it the other way round

Be plenty of down'n dirty stuff to get my teeth into with arch, yast has made me lazy!

I'm no stranger to a wrestle with grub issues but I ain't so conversant with it I don't have to resort to a google sometimes and it would be time that I could spend on learning stuff I need to about Arch itself, I know if I install the suse last the windoze and debian definitely won't need any fooling with to boot and pretty likely the arch won't either, it's pretty good at the grub auto-configure-on-install thing so I'll do 'er that way

Cheers

ANOKNUSA · 2011-11-12 17:18:22

Ecky wrote:

Thanks for that bit of info there lagagnon, helps me plan the order in which to do things, was gonna install arch last as I can run through the whole suse setup/after-setup-config pretty quickly but it might be simpler to do it the other way round
Be plenty of down'n dirty stuff to get my teeth into with arch, yast has made me lazy!
I'm no stranger to a wrestle with grub issues but I ain't so conversant with it I don't have to resort to a google sometimes and it would be time that I could spend on learning stuff I need to about Arch itself, I know if I install the suse last the windoze and debian definitely won't need any fooling with to boot and pretty likely the arch won't either, it's pretty good at the grub auto-configure-on-install thing so I'll do 'er that way
Cheers

So, you'd like to learn about Arch, eh? You can always install GRUB2, along with the os-prober package from the AUR. If you choose not to go that route, just read the wiki page on GRUB to set up menu.lst. Also, if using Google to solve problems seems like a daunting task, you should probably start adjusting now; Yast is about as far from the Arch Way as one can get.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-11-12 00:33:24

How easily will Arch configure my existing OS's to boot when installin

#2 2011-11-12 00:51:20

Re: How easily will Arch configure my existing OS's to boot when installin

#3 2011-11-12 01:19:26

Re: How easily will Arch configure my existing OS's to boot when installin

#4 2011-11-12 17:18:22

Re: How easily will Arch configure my existing OS's to boot when installin

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