From: ray@zianet.com   
      
   On Mon, 23 Jul 2012 09:56:04 -0600, Warren Post wrote:   
      
   > As mentioned in recent separate threads, I temporarily installed a   
   > second distro on my box to test and play with. I tried to do so in such   
   > a way that it would not affect my production distro, but what in fact   
   > happened was that the new bootloader would not boot the production   
   > distro. Specifically, here's what I did:   
   >   
   > My daily driver distro has been mdv2010.0/1/2 x32 since 2010.0 was   
   > released, set up thus:   
   >   
   > Filesystem    Type    Size  Used Mounted on /dev/sda1     ext4    7.7G   
   > 4.5G 61% / /dev/sda8     ext4    139G   63G 53% /home /dev/sda5     ext4   
   >    2.1G  173M  9% /opt none         tmpfs    496M  3.1M  1% /tmp   
   > /dev/sda6     ext4    2.1G  435M 23% /var/www   
   >   
   > I insured that /boot/grub/menu.lst was recoverable from my normal   
   > backups, and just to be sure I burned all of /boot to a CD. /boot does   
   > not have its own partition; it's in the / partition. mdv2010.2 uses grub   
   > 0.97. Grub 1.96 is available in contrib, but I'm not using it.   
   >   
   > Using gparted on a live distro, I shrunk /home by 10G and created a new   
   > ext4 partition there for testing new distros. Then I installed   
   > CrunchBang 10 x64, putting everything save swap into the new partition.   
   > Swap is shared with mdv2010.2, which I understand is no problem so long   
   > as I do not hibernate or suspend either distro. CrunchBang's installer   
   > detected my existing distro and offered to add it to grub, which I   
   > accepted. All entries in the preexisting grub were migrated into   
   > Crunchbang's grub 1.99 boot menu.   
   >   
   > CrunchBang runs fine, but attempting to boot any imported boot menu item   
   > fails with a kernel panic. Device naming changed between grub legacy and   
   > grub 2, and I can boot into Mandriva if at the grub window I edit the   
   > stanza, changing "initrd (hd0,0)" to "initrd (hd0,1)". Booting Mandriva   
   > is delayed for 60 seconds while "waiting for device sda1" and sda7   
   > appear on screen.   
   >   
   > These minor boot hiccups don't bother me. I plan to replace my   
   > production distro once I test the other distros on my list, and I take   
   > it for granted that on any new distro I'll be tweaking the bootloader   
   > and a whole lot more besides. What does worry me is that my whole   
   > strategy of testing distros without putting my production distro at risk   
   > is obviously flawed. What should I do differently the next time I   
   > install a distro for testing?   
      
   I would suggest that when you are given the choice of installing the   
   bootloader on a new distro, you tell it to install to the root partition   
   rather than the MBR. You can then chainload to it from your production   
   distro's bootloader.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)