Re: Configuring grub questions
On Jan 26, 2014, at 3:13 PM, Alex <mysqlstudent(a)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