Am Sat, 11 Jun 2011 23:07:00 -0400 schrieb "Joe(theWordy)Philbrook" <jtwdyp@xxxxxxxx>: > Actually It's been a long time since I had actual boot failures with > Arch... And if memory serves it wasn't the updated kernels fault, > though I no longer remember what I'd done... You see, those cases in which a kernel update leads to a boot failure are very rare. ;-) And Arch Linux kernels are usually tested in [testing] and are only moved to [core] if there are no bigger issues found. > However I have > experienced other Linux that no longer booted properly upon kernel > upgrades... When my grub installation fails to properly boot one of > my Linux, I immediately use the chainloader entry to get that > distro's own grub. Having a back-up in case a new kernel doesn't work > for me just feels like the right thing to do. And now I know (and > will have notes) how to resolve that problem in the event that an > Arch kernel upgrade ever does fail me. Thanks again! > ... > Well I call it grub legacy because that's what gnu.org is calling it > now... That's what it's called. > According to them the old grub has been replaced with a new version. > Though I don't see it as an improvement. > I think the only Distro I've got installed that really likes "grub 2" > is Ubuntu, But since I didn't let it use ext4, I can still even boot > that with the classic grub. ☻ Which bootloader you need depends on your installation and hardware, not on the distro. There are at least 3 bootloaders (grub legacy, grub2 and syslinux) which have different capabilities and can't easily be replaced in any case. But all of them can handle ext4. > I guess you would either call it just a "grub partition" Or perhaps > you would have said "boot partition" without specifying which boot > loader is installed there. I guess you meant the /boot partition. ;-) > It is not that uncommon among multi-Linux-Distro, multi-booters to > have a separate bootloader installed to the MBR from the ones each > distro installed to their root partitions. Though the others I've > heard about usually just select the appropriate chainloader entry for > the Linux they want to boot, which in turn usually has a very short > timeout before it automatically boots it's default entry. > > I myself rarely bother with the chainloader entries. They are mostly > only there in case I goof when I edit the entries I normally boot > from. This configuration also makes it easy to use a supergrub disc > in the event that my normal boot partition gets corrupted as each > installed Linux has it's own boot loader so all I'd need to tell > supergrub is to boot the appropriate partition... I would completely remove the chainloaders. Make one /boot parition for every distro, but only install one bootloader from your main distro into the MBR. Don't let the other distros install a bootloader and just configure the one bootloader to boot the other distros, too. That's the easiest way which should always work. Btw., if you let every distro install a bootloader into the MBR, the previously installed one will be overwritten. There won't be two different bootloaders in the MBR. Depending on what you are doing with your multi-boot system, you probably should consider using virtualization. Heiko
