Arch Linux

Mikus01

Member

From: Puerto Rico

Registered: 2010-11-14

Posts: 16

[SOLVED] Trying multiboot with Windows 7, Ubuntu and my newfound love

Hi, I'm a two years old Linux user, I've been doing dual boot between Windows XP/7 and Ubuntu.  Now I'm trying to use ArchLinux too but keeping an Ubuntu partition.  The problem is that I can't find a way for either GRUB/GRUB2 to see both Linux OS ( though no prob with Windows 7 :S ) can someone give me some hints on how could I configure it? Note that running update-grub from ubuntu has only screwed the grub.cfg by eliminating Arch from the grub OS list

Last edited by Mikus01 (2010-11-15 18:09:11)

---

The problem with the world is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?

philotus

Member

From: Missouri

Registered: 2010-11-10

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Trying multiboot with Windows 7, Ubuntu and my newfound love

You've probably already looked at this but the wiki page on Grub is pretty extensive (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Grub), and you should especially focus on the section (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gr … configfile) which talks specifically about booting multiple linux OSs.

Mikus01

Member

From: Puerto Rico

Registered: 2010-11-14

Posts: 16

Re: [SOLVED] Trying multiboot with Windows 7, Ubuntu and my newfound love

great, thanks for the link... I had seen it before yet after going through it again I figured out a way to do it... I manually added the information for ArchLinux on /boot/grub/grub.cfg... This is what I added:

 menuentry "ArchLinux" {
    recordfail
        insmod part_msdos
        insmod ext2
        set root='(hd0,msdos6)'
    linux   /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda7 ro single
        echo    'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
        initrd  /kernel26.img
    
} 

my error was putting the device the boot partition was on in the /vmlinuz26 root line
thanks for the help

---

The problem with the world is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?

ChoK

Member

From: France

Registered: 2008-10-01

Posts: 346

Re: [SOLVED] Trying multiboot with Windows 7, Ubuntu and my newfound love

/boot/grub/grub.cfg is regenerated each time you do update-grub, you will have to put that again manually when you change your grub entries (for example when ubuntu updates kernel)

Since you use update-grub from ubuntu
- In ubuntu, create a file 09_custom_arch in /etc/grub.d
- add this code inside

#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.

menuentry "Arch Linux" {
insmod ext2
set root=(hd0,6)
linux /vmlinuz26  root=/dev/sda7 ro quiet rootdelay=1
initrd /kernel26.img
}

- verify/tune  the boot parameters "set root =" and "linux /vmlinuz26 <parameters>" (according to your post, what I wrote is correct) and set the file to executable

Now grub will have the correct entry when you do update-grub

Some cosmetic bonuses:
edit the file /etc/default/grub
add this line GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER="true" (os-prober tries to add every combination of detected kernels and wannabe root partitions on your hard-drive, most of them not working and it's a nice mess with multi-OS)

Last edited by ChoK (2010-11-15 10:34:16)

---

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.
Picasso
Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.
Saint Exupéry

Mikus01

Member

From: Puerto Rico

Registered: 2010-11-14

Posts: 16

Re: [SOLVED] Trying multiboot with Windows 7, Ubuntu and my newfound love

Great, I appreciate your post Chok, it works perfectly

---

The problem with the world is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?