I have Ubuntu (SDA), OpenSolaris (SDB) and XP (SDD) running on the same system installed to their own drives. SDC is currently unused, but will have FreeBSD once I confirm some driver availability and hardware compatibility.
Now, Grub - including the version with Ubuntu - has two features and command syntax that make things easy to bypass unfriendly operating system specific dependancies like OpenSolaris supposedly requiring it's Grub for ZFS support, and XP supposedly needing to be installed on the first partition of the first drive. Both requirements turn out to be irrelevant if you use chainloader and map syntax in your Ubuntu menu.lst. You don't need to 'install OpenSolaris last'. In fact, installing OpenSolaris (or XP) last limits you because of such unfriendly proprietary or operating system specific bootloader requirements. Ubuntu's menu.lst snippet from my system follows. You will need to modify to reflect the target drives and/or partitions in your system. # /dev/sdd1 title Microsoft Windows XP Professional - SP3 root (hd3,0) map (hd0) (hd3) map (hd3) (hd0) chainloader +1 title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-21-generic root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-21-generic root=UUID=myuuiddata ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-21-generic quiet title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-21-generic (recovery mode) root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-21-generic root=UUID=myuuiddata ro single initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-21-generic title Ubuntu 8.04.1, memtest86+ root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin quiet # /dev/sdb1 title OpenSolaris 2008.11 b96 root (hd1,0) chainloader +1 In this menu, Ubuntu's grub is what loads up on start-up. XP is the default OS selection and if chosen from Ubuntu's grub menu, will remap drives to trick XP into thinking it's on the first drive and first partition, and will then call with "chainloader +1" XP's own bootloader (boot.ini) which then takes over booting up the system into XP from there. Now, for this topic - if OpenSolaris is selected from Ubuntu's grub menu, something similar occurs, though I do not need to remap devices to trick OpenSolaris. Grub doesn't care or need to know anything about ZFS or any other unfriendly assumptions made by certain operating system installers. It just calls OpenSolaris' bootloader with the "chainloader +1" syntax and OpenSolaris can do what it pleases from there. Even better, now whenever I update OpenSolaris builds, it only know about it's own bootloader menu and don't corrupt my real main (Ubuntu) menu.lst because it only edits it's own menu. So my OpenSolaris boot menu has entries for b95 and b96, and soon will have an entry for b98. HTH p.s., I would definitely like to see OpenSolaris' automated installer be a bit more friendly in how it handles existing bootloaders. It's not as destructive as XP or Vista, but it could be made a bit more friendly by not assuming that when it's installed it will be the primary or only OS on a system. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
