>I would definitely like to see OpenSolaris' automated installer be a 
bit more friendly in how it handles existing bootloaders.

+1

I would like to be certain, however, that I understand exactly how you 
setup your system.  I am assuming that in order to get this to work:

title        OpenSolaris 2008.11 b96
root        (hd1,0)
chainloader    +1

You manually installed the OpenSolaris GRUB onto the partition that 
contains OpenSolaris (since, AFAIK, there is no way to get the installer 
to do that for you, IIRC it always writes GRUB to the MBR).  In other 
words, you did something like I describe here: 
http://blogs.sun.com/observatory/entry/triple_boot_part_5_reinstalling.

Or did you use some other technique to get the chain load to work?

Thanks,
Gregg


Philip D'Amato wrote:
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> opensolaris-help mailing list
> opensolaris-help at opensolaris.org
>   

Reply via email to