> In my "new" machine I have a disk with both XP and 64 bit Ubuntu 12.04. I have a second disk with 32 bit Ubuntu > 12.04. So far I have swapped cables when I wanted to do something with the 32 bit version. Is it possible to have > both drives plugged in at the same time and have GRUB give me the option of which of the three OS's to boot? If > it matters, these are both SATA drives
Sure. If you're using (legacy) Grub, you'll need to add an entry in /boot/grub/device.lst for the additional device, and the appropriate entries in /boot/grub/menu.lst. Here is a sample device.map: device.map: (hd0) /dev/sda (hd1) /dev/sdb The (hd0) entry will already be there, an I added (hd1). Then just copy the relevant entry from the menu.lst file on your second disk into /boot/grub/menu.lst on your first disk, but change the hd0 entries to hd1. Here's one of mine, showing both the existing (hd0) entry, and the new (hd1) entry: title Desktop -- openSUSE 12.1 - 3.1.10-1.16 - hd0 root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.1.10-1.16-desktop root=/dev/md1 resume=/dev/md2 splash=silent showopts init=/sbin/sysvinit ipv6.disable=1 vga=0x31a initrd /boot/initrd-3.1.10-1.16-desktop title Desktop -- openSUSE 12.1 - 3.1.10-1.16 - hd1 root (hd1,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.1.10-1.16-desktop root=/dev/md1 resume=/dev/md2 splash=silent showopts init=/sbin/sysvinit ipv6.disable=1 vga=0x31a ipv4only=1 initrd /boot/initrd-3.1.10-1.16-desktop In my case they're both the same kernel, devices, etc., but they could just as easily be drastically different (even Linux and Windows). --- If you're using GRUB2, boot up with both disks plugged in, and run update-grub2. It should discover that the second disk is bootable (too), and add it to the menu. Here's an example: # update-grub2 Generating grub.cfg ... Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-37-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-37-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-36-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-36-generic Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin Found Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS (12.04) on /dev/sda2 Found Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS (12.04) on /dev/sdb2 done # Notice that in addition to the primary image (which in my case is an RAID device), it also found bootable systems on both /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdb2. In my case those are really the mirror images from the RAID, but they wouldn't need to be. Good luck. -Brian _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
