HP6070b Laptop multi-booting Win7, MDA2009 and several versions of
Mageia (4, 5 and 6, I think). Could be a PCLinux16 as well!

I'm currently downloading MGA8 and want to install it in the next few
days, so it might have been fortuitous that, tonight, I was catching up
on several threads here and, in the thread "installing Mageia 7 on new system", I came across this from Herman Viaene

Quote
You don't have to "delete" the partition which is your "/" for your M7 installation.
Start the installation of M8, choose Custom partitioning, choose a free
(or one you do not need any further) as "/" for your M8 installation.
That would thus be another one than the M7 "/" partition.
Then you can either leave the M7 "/" partition alone or assign it mount
point "/spareroot", that does not matter.
Then end the partitioning, and go on. The installation will the format
your new "/", but by default it will not touch the "/spareroot"
In the end you will ens up with a dual boot M7/M8, which one to boot, is
your choice at the boot menu.
If you choose to boot the M7, then the partition on which you assigned
the M8 /, will not be assigned, it will just be an unused ext4 (or
whatever format you take) partition, no bother.
End Quote

Which, I'm sure, will be very helpful, (changing the MGA7 to MGA6) but
.......

In my current set-up, MGA6 is my Root install. If I select, instead, say
MGA5, I then get a new menu from which I can select MGA5, MGA4, MDA2009.

If I then select (from this MGA5 menu) MGA4, I get another menu offering
MGA4 and MDA2009. Etc, Etc!!

When I (some time this week, hopefully) install MGA8 into the partition
that currently holds MDA2009, can I alter things so that if I select
MGA6 from the MGA8 Menu, I go directly to booting MGA6 rather than
having to select MGA6 from the MGA6 menu??
--
Daniel

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Op Sun, 28 Feb 2021 21:27:34 +1100, schreef Daniel65:

HP6070b Laptop multi-booting Win7, MDA2009 and several versions of
Mageia (4, 5 and 6, I think). Could be a PCLinux16 as well!

I'm currently downloading MGA8 and want to install it in the next few
days, so it might have been fortuitous that, tonight, I was catching up
on several threads here and, in the thread "installing Mageia 7 on new system", I came across this from Herman Viaene

Quote You don't have to "delete" the partition which is your "/" for
your M7 installation.
Start the installation of M8, choose Custom partitioning, choose a free
(or one you do not need any further) as "/" for your M8 installation.
That would thus be another one than the M7 "/" partition.
Then you can either leave the M7 "/" partition alone or assign it mount
point "/spareroot", that does not matter.
Then end the partitioning, and go on. The installation will the format
your new "/", but by default it will not touch the "/spareroot"
In the end you will ens up with a dual boot M7/M8, which one to boot, is
your choice at the boot menu.
If you choose to boot the M7, then the partition on which you assigned
the M8 /, will not be assigned, it will just be an unused ext4 (or
whatever format you take) partition, no bother.
End Quote

Which, I'm sure, will be very helpful, (changing the MGA7 to MGA6) but
......

In my current set-up, MGA6 is my Root install. If I select, instead, say MGA5, I then get a new menu from which I can select MGA5, MGA4, MDA2009.

If I then select (from this MGA5 menu) MGA4, I get another menu offering
MGA4 and MDA2009. Etc, Etc!!

My best guess is that there is some confusion about the partitioning of
the system and the way the options are presented in the boot menu. I
think you have opted in the bootloader options at installation to put the bootsystem somewhere else than the default, I cann't remember from the
top of my head which these are exactly. But the result is that the grub
menu options are either installed on the disk itself (MBR???) or on the partition you install as /. In the latter case you would get indeed a
cascade in the way when you initially had M4, and you install M5, this one does not overwrite the existing grub menu, but creates a new one on its
own root. And because "foreign OS probe" is on, it takes the M4 with it. Repeat the same with M6, that will see M5 and this one sees also M4
etc....

I've never seen that in practice, so if you install now M8 and leave the system at its defaults, I guess it will detect all foreign OS's and put
them in one structure.

My 2c

Herman Viaene

When I (some time this week, hopefully) install MGA8 into the partition
that currently holds MDA2009, can I alter things so that if I select
MGA6 from the MGA8 Menu, I go directly to booting MGA6 rather than
having to select MGA6 from the MGA6 menu??

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On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 21:27:34 +1100, Daniel65 wrote:

When I (some time this week, hopefully) install MGA8 into the partition
that currently holds MDA2009, can I alter things so that if I select
MGA6 from the MGA8 Menu, I go directly to booting MGA6 rather than
having to select MGA6 from the MGA6 menu??

Usually any time you do an install of an OS using grub, it will scan
all partitions and create a grub menu entry for each OS install found.
And as a byproduct the new install becomes your new Root install.

If it were me, I would run gparted and format/label MDA2009.


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Bit Twister wrote on 1/3/21 12:53 am:

On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 21:27:34 +1100, Daniel65 wrote:

When I (some time this week, hopefully) install MGA8 into the partition
that currently holds MDA2009, can I alter things so that if I select
MGA6 from the MGA8 Menu, I go directly to booting MGA6 rather than
having to select MGA6 from the MGA6 menu??

Usually any time you do an install of an OS using grub, it will scan
all partitions and create a grub menu entry for each OS install found.
And as a byproduct the new install becomes your new Root install.

If it were me, I would run gparted and format/label MDA2009.

Don't know about using Gparted, by the (currently) MDA2009 partition
will be the one to go!

I think my problem with have to make several selections (i.e. selections
from several Grubs) might be that when I've done the various
Installations, I've installed the Grub into each partition rather than
just having one Grub (in [what's the location] on the Hard Disk) which
would enable me to go directly to any system on the Hard Drive rather
than through two/several different Grub Menu's!
--
Daniel

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Daniel65 wrote on 1/3/21 10:42 pm:

Bit Twister wrote on 1/3/21 12:53 am:

On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 21:27:34 +1100, Daniel65 wrote:

When I (some time this week, hopefully) install MGA8 into the partition
that currently holds MDA2009, can I alter things so that if I select
MGA6 from the MGA8 Menu, I go directly to booting MGA6 rather than
having to select MGA6 from the MGA6 menu??

Usually any time you do an install of an OS using grub, it will scan
all partitions and create a grub menu entry for each OS install found.
And as a byproduct the new install becomes your new Root install.

If it were me, I would run gparted and format/label MDA2009.

Don't know about using Gparted, by the (currently) MDA2009 partition
will be the one to go!

I think my problem with have to make several selections (i.e. selections from several Grubs) might be that when I've done the various
Installations, I've installed the Grub into each partition rather than
just having one Grub (in [what's the location] on the Hard Disk) which
would enable me to go directly to any system on the Hard Drive rather
than through two/several different Grub Menu's!

Hmm!! Could the "[what's the location]" that I refer to above be the
"Master Boot Record" or similar??
--
Daniel

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On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 22:42:23 +1100, Daniel65 wrote:

Bit Twister wrote on 1/3/21 12:53 am:

On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 21:27:34 +1100, Daniel65 wrote:

When I (some time this week, hopefully) install MGA8 into the partition
that currently holds MDA2009, can I alter things so that if I select
MGA6 from the MGA8 Menu, I go directly to booting MGA6 rather than
having to select MGA6 from the MGA6 menu??

Usually any time you do an install of an OS using grub, it will scan
all partitions and create a grub menu entry for each OS install found.
And as a byproduct the new install becomes your new Root install.

If it were me, I would run gparted and format/label MDA2009.

Don't know about using Gparted, by the (currently) MDA2009 partition
will be the one to go!

gparted is a gui formatting tool for disk/partitions.

Take a look, just put gparted youtube
in the url of your search engine.

I think my problem with have to make several selections (i.e. selections
from several Grubs) might be that when I've done the various
Installations, I've installed the Grub into each partition rather than
just having one Grub (in [what's the location] on the Hard Disk) which
would enable me to go directly to any system on the Hard Drive rather
than through two/several different Grub Menu's!

Well, I prefer one grub menu for different installs.

Where you install the boot loader is your choice.

Each install has a grub.cfg which is what presents selections
for what to boot.


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On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 23:33:05 +1100, Daniel65 wrote:

Daniel65 wrote on 1/3/21 10:42 pm:

Bit Twister wrote on 1/3/21 12:53 am:

On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 21:27:34 +1100, Daniel65 wrote:

When I (some time this week, hopefully) install MGA8 into the partition >>>> that currently holds MDA2009, can I alter things so that if I select
MGA6 from the MGA8 Menu, I go directly to booting MGA6 rather than
having to select MGA6 from the MGA6 menu??

Usually any time you do an install of an OS using grub, it will scan
all partitions and create a grub menu entry for each OS install found.
And as a byproduct the new install becomes your new Root install.

If it were me, I would run gparted and format/label MDA2009.

Don't know about using Gparted, by the (currently) MDA2009 partition
will be the one to go!

I think my problem with have to make several selections (i.e. selections
from several Grubs) might be that when I've done the various
Installations, I've installed the Grub into each partition rather than
just having one Grub (in [what's the location] on the Hard Disk) which
would enable me to go directly to any system on the Hard Drive rather
than through two/several different Grub Menu's!

Hmm!! Could the "[what's the location]" that I refer to above be the
"Master Boot Record" or similar??

No, put Master Boot Record in your search engine.

I call the grub menu the "production" grub menu. It is the one I pick
from to do all my boots.

After you install Mga8, grub will always boot the the last selection you
pick to boot as the default. I do not like that feature so I change
the setting.


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Op Mon, 01 Mar 2021 23:33:05 +1100, schreef Daniel65:

Daniel65 wrote on 1/3/21 10:42 pm:

Bit Twister wrote on 1/3/21 12:53 am:

On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 21:27:34 +1100, Daniel65 wrote:

When I (some time this week, hopefully) install MGA8 into the
partition that currently holds MDA2009, can I alter things so that if
I select MGA6 from the MGA8 Menu, I go directly to booting MGA6
rather than having to select MGA6 from the MGA6 menu??

Usually any time you do an install of an OS using grub, it will scan
all partitions and create a grub menu entry for each OS install found.
And as a byproduct the new install becomes your new Root install.

If it were me, I would run gparted and format/label MDA2009.

Don't know about using Gparted, by the (currently) MDA2009 partition
will be the one to go!

That you can do at installation time by using custom partitioning, but I
guess you know that.

I think my problem with have to make several selections (i.e.
selections from several Grubs) might be that when I've done the various
Installations, I've installed the Grub into each partition rather than
just having one Grub (in [what's the location] on the Hard Disk) which
would enable me to go directly to any system on the Hard Drive rather
than through two/several different Grub Menu's!

The location of the grub is /boot/EFI which is in a partition on its own
on the disk. That's the default choice when installing and that takes
care of all all OS's on your system.
But be carefull with the total number of kernels in your system as each
of them takes an item in the config. And what it takes as default is
sometimes not the most recent one. grub-customizer is your friend when
that happens.
I would recommend to check each of your Mageia versions installed and
make sure you have in each of them the two most recent, not more.

Hmm!! Could the "[what's the location]" that I refer to above be the
"Master Boot Record" or similar??

See just above.

Herman Viaene

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On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 08:50:09 +0000 (UTC), Herman Viaene wrote:

The location of the grub is /boot/EFI which is in a partition on its own
on the disk. That's the default choice when installing and that takes
care of all all OS's on your system.

Only if bios is set non-cms. If bios is set CMS/Legacy OS then a small bios_grub partition has the code to pull the boot menu from /boot/grub2


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On 2/3/21 10:16 pm, Bit Twister wrote:

On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 08:50:09 +0000 (UTC), Herman Viaene wrote:

The location of the grub is /boot/EFI which is in a partition on its own
on the disk. That's the default choice when installing and that takes
care of all all OS's on your system.

Only if bios is set non-cms. If bios is set CMS/Legacy OS then a small bios_grub partition has the code to pull the boot menu from /boot/grub2

Yes, but...

I do multiple installations a lot. Each operating system has its own
root partition containing the kernel, etc. If you want to change the
contents of your EFI partition, you have to do it from the partition
which put the files there. That is usually the most recent distro. For example, I am running Mageia 8 as my primary system. I have Mint as
well. When I installed Mint, it overwrote Mageia's files in /boot/EFI
with its own version, usually making Mint the default OS. Then, to put
the bootloader how I want it, with Mageia as the default, I have two
choices:

(a) I can keep Mint's files, but in /etc/default/grub, I can set Mageia
to be the default; or
(b) I can go back to Mageia and re-install Grub from there.

Even if the second OS (Mint in this case) does not replace the
bootloader, I still have to go back into Mageia and run "update-grub"
from there, or there will be messages that Grub2 is still looking for a deleted kernel.

Ideally, the bootloader should be entirely neutral, independent of all
the distros. Grub2 cannot be installed that way, but it is normal for
rEFInd. Others are mentioned around the Web, but none of them seem to
be generally available.

HTH,

Doug.

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On Sat, 13 Mar 2021 21:58:53 +1100, Doug Laidlaw wrote:

On 2/3/21 10:16 pm, Bit Twister wrote:

On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 08:50:09 +0000 (UTC), Herman Viaene wrote:

The location of the grub is /boot/EFI which is in a partition on its own >>> on the disk. That's the default choice when installing and that takes
care of all all OS's on your system.

Only if bios is set non-cms. If bios is set CMS/Legacy OS then a small
bios_grub partition has the code to pull the boot menu from /boot/grub2

Yes, but...

I do multiple installations a lot. Each operating system has its own
root partition containing the kernel, etc. If you want to change the
contents of your EFI partition, you have to do it from the partition
which put the files there. That is usually the most recent distro. For example, I am running Mageia 8 as my primary system. I have Mint as
well. When I installed Mint, it overwrote Mageia's files in /boot/EFI
with its own version, usually making Mint the default OS. Then, to put
the bootloader how I want it, with Mageia as the default, I have two
choices:

(a) I can keep Mint's files, but in /etc/default/grub, I can set Mageia
to be the default; or
(b) I can go back to Mageia and re-install Grub from there.

Even if the second OS (Mint in this case) does not replace the
bootloader, I still have to go back into Mageia and run "update-grub"
from there, or there will be messages that Grub2 is still looking for a deleted kernel.

Keep in mind that Mageia default grub setup is to boot last booted OS.
So, boot mint, install new mint kernel, next grub default boot will be
the old mint kernel.



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Op Sat, 13 Mar 2021 21:58:53 +1100, schreef Doug Laidlaw:

.....snip ....

(a) I can keep Mint's files, but in /etc/default/grub, I can set Mageia
to be the default; or (b) I can go back to Mageia and re-install Grub
from there.

You don't have to reinstall grub. Use grub-customizer. And grub2 is has by default no fixed default choice. If you don't do anything at boot
(selecting any other OS), it will simply boot to the last one used before.

Herman Viaene

Even if the second OS (Mint in this case) does not replace the
bootloader, I still have to go back into Mageia and run "update-grub"
from there, or there will be messages that Grub2 is still looking for a deleted kernel.

Ideally, the bootloader should be entirely neutral, independent of all
the distros. Grub2 cannot be installed that way, but it is normal for
rEFInd. Others are mentioned around the Web, but none of them seem to
be generally available.

HTH,

Doug.

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On Sun, 14 Mar 2021 05:37:28 -0400, Herman Viaene <herman@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Op Sat, 13 Mar 2021 21:58:53 +1100, schreef Doug Laidlaw:

....snip ....

(a) I can keep Mint's files, but in /etc/default/grub, I can set Mageia
to be the default; or (b) I can go back to Mageia and re-install Grub
from there.

You don't have to reinstall grub. Use grub-customizer. And grub2 is has by default no fixed default choice. If you don't do anything at boot
(selecting any other OS), it will simply boot to the last one used before.

Herman Viaene

That depends on the settings in /etc/default/grub and whether or not os-prober is installed. I don't install os-prober as I have too many similar installs and with os-prober the menu is larger than the screen will show and makes figuring out which entry is for which install is difficult, if not impossible.

I now use one grub install per drive and use the bios boot menu to select which drive's grub menu to run.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--
Change dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org to davidwhodgins@teksavvy.com for
email replies.

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On Sun, 14 Mar 2021 11:58:16 -0400, David W. Hodgins wrote:

That depends on the settings in /etc/default/grub and whether or not os-prober
is installed. I don't install os-prober as I have too many similar installs and
with os-prober the menu is larger than the screen will show and makes figuring
out which entry is for which install is difficult, if not impossible.

Yup, been there. Found it much easier to use partition labels to
get "readable" grub boot menu,

Also found out what causes grub to take sooooo long to scan for
other installs. Thank you systemd. If anyone wants to try it,
label your partitions, drop or create a link to this script in /etc/grub.d
set execute bit, and run update-grub.
----8<----8<----8<----8<--cut below this line--8<----8<----8<----8<----8< #!/bin/sh #**********************************************************************
#* 10a_label_xx__grub - grub2 script to generate menu entries using
#* the partition's media label
#*
#* Install Procedure
#* save as 10a_label_xx__grub
#* chmod +x 10a_label_xx__grub
#* cp 10a_label_xx__grub /etc/grub.d or create a link in /etc/grub.d
#* and then run update-grub2 to generate a new grub2 menu.
#*
#* Assumptions:
#* All partitions containing /boot/vmlinuz have a label
#* and are ext4
#*
#*
#**********************************************************************
#
#
# grub-mkconfig helper script.
# Copyright (C) 2006,2007,2008,2009,2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
#
# GRUB is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# GRUB is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with GRUB. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

set -e

prefix="/usr"
exec_prefix="/usr"
datarootdir="/usr/share"

.. "/usr/share/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib"

device=""
_extra_cmd=""
line=""
label=""
_label_fn="/tmp/10a_label.lst"

export TEXTDOMAIN=grub
export TEXTDOMAINDIR="${datarootdir}/locale"


#****************************************************
#* create grub2 menu stanza. arg 1 is partition label
#* GRUB_CMDLINE_* are found in /etc/default/grub
#****************************************************

menu_stanza_1 () {
cat << EOF
menuentry "$1" {

set gfxpayload=text
insmod regexp
insmod gzio
insmod part_gpt
insmod ext2
search --no-floppy --label --set=root $1
linux /boot/vmlinuz root=LABEL=$1 ${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT} ${2} ${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX}
initrd /boot/initrd.img
}
EOF

}
#*********************************************
#* create current mount as first menu entry
#*********************************************

mkdir --parents /mnt/fix
set -- $(mount | grep ' / ')
device=$1
label=$(e2label ${device} 2> /dev/null)
menu_stanza_1 $label

#***********************************************************
#* look through other ext4 partitions for /boot/vmlinuz-desktop
#* and create a menu entry using its partition media label.
#***********************************************************

lsblk -lno NAME,LABEL,FSTYPE | grep ext4 | grep -vE "_bkup|hotbu|bk_up" > $_label_fn

while read -r line; do
set -- $line
if [ "$2" != "$label" ] ; then
mount -t auto /dev/$1 /mnt/fix
if [ -e /mnt/fix/boot/vmlinuz ] ; then
if [ $2 = "mga5" ] ; then
_extra_cmd="nokmsboot"
else
_extra_cmd=""
fi
menu_stanza_1 "$2" "$_extra_cmd"
fi
umount --lazy /mnt/fix
fi
done < $_label_fn

rmdir /mnt/fix
rm --force $_label_fn

#***************** end /etc/grub.d/10a_label_xx__grub *************************


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