Configuring grub questions

[Chris Murphy]

On Jan 26, 2014, at 3:13 PM, Alex <mysqlstudent at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I have an old computer with two disks. One is a F18 system and the
> other is a Win7 system. Both disks were installed and configured as
> primary. I've been shutting down the system and switching the IDE
> cables depending on which one I'd like to have booted.

You should be able to choose the drive with BIOS setup rather than physically switching cables.

> 
> How can I configure the grub on the F18 system so I can control which
> system I'd like to load at boot time?

Well that's a rabbit hole but what you can try for starters is to mount the Windows volume (open question as to which one, I'm mainly used to single partition Windows installs, but if you install to an unpartitioned drive, the default behavior of the Windows installer creates a sort of boot partition that's small, and a main one); and then simply do:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

By default mkconfig uses os-prober and ought to find Windows without it being mounted but it might help it find it easier if it is mounted. If it's encrypted, with TrueCrypt or Bit Locker then I have no ideas whether it's possible.

> 
> Could I set up the F18 system as a secondary disk with the Win7 system
> as the primary, and boot from the secondary with grub configured on
> it?

Yes you tell BIOS setup you want to boot from the secondary disk. And then it will always load GRUB.


> I'm not sure how Win7 would respond to booting as a secondary disk
> when the install was done as primary…

I don't think it'll care.


> If this was lilo, I could probably figure it out, but I'm unsure how
> to configure grub for this specifically.

I'm not sure LILO on disk A will point to an OS on disk B. GRUB can definitely do that.


Chris Murphy