Dual Linux installation problem

ravi.chakram

Hi,

Suse and WindowsXP is running in the PC. I installed Ubuntu also in the PC. After installing Ubuntu i am not able to enter into Suse. At boot loader stage it is showing Ubuntu and WindowsXP only. It is not showing Suse.

After logon to Ubuntu I can see the files present in WindowsXP and Suse by mounting that particular drive. Can you please help me to get Suse back.

Goineasy9

Are you using the Windows bootloader or are you booting XP from within Ubuntu (from the Ubuntu grub screen)? If you are booting XP from Ubuntu grub, can you print out your /boot/grub/menu.lst here? You just might have to fix the entry for Suse. The Ubuntu install is usually good at recognizing what distros are present during install, you just might need a tweak. If you can, also tell us what partition your /boot is on for Suse.

mfillpot

I agree with GoinEasy9, the problem isthat the ubuntu bootloader overwrote the Suse bootloader and unfortunately didn't auto-detect Suse. Once you past your menu.lst and tell use what partition Suse is on we can help you to rewrite your menu.lst file to add a Suse entry.

ravi.chakram

Hi,

Please find the menu.lst file in the attachment.

ravi.chakram

Please find the file in the attachment. [file name=menu.txt size=5025]http://www.linux.com/media/kunena/attachments/legacy/files/menu.txt[/file]

mfillpot

Since you have not given the suse partition number we cannot guide you to completely correct this, but here are some basic steps that should get you most of the way.

1. Make a new directory in ubuntu named /boot/suse
2. Mount your suse partition on your system
3. copy the files from your suse boot directory into /boot/suse
4. Copy the following lines into your menu.lst file, substituting the values in {} with the appropriate values for your suse installation.

title SUSE
kernel /boot/suse/{suse vmlinux file} ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/suse/{suse intrd file}
quiet

ravi.chakram

Hi,

when i mount the particular drive in which Suse installed, i am seeing only the home directory and the files in it. I am not able to see the /boot. Can you please help me to get back Suse.

Please find the fdisk command output below.

root@mohan-desktop:/home/mohan# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80060424192 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9733 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x48ec48ec

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2550 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 2551 9733 57697447+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 2551 5100 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 5101 7058 15727603+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7 8447 9640 9590773+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 9641 9733 746991 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda9 7059 8381 10626966 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 8382 8446 522081 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order
root@mohan-desktop:/home/mohan#

Please let me know if any commands output required from the system.

mfillpot

Which partition is your root partition for suse?

ravi.chakram

I am really sorry, I am not sure about the partition. Could you please provide the command to know the details.

mfillpot

fidsk is the closest thing and all it does is list the partitions. We need to know if sda7 or sda9 is your suse installation, most likely sda7 is suse and sda9 is ubuntu. If I am correct then you need to mount sda7 to extract the boot files into the ubuntu boot directory, then modify menu.lst as I instructed.

ravi.chakram

I mounted sda7, But after mounting i can see only home directory.

root@mohan-desktop:/# mount /dev/sda7 /mnt
root@mohan-desktop:/# cd /mnt
root@mohan-desktop:/mnt# ls -lrt
total 2
drwxr-xr-x 37 mohan users 1848 2009-09-26 14:55 ravik
root@mohan-desktop:/mnt# cd ravik
root@mohan-desktop:/mnt/ravik# ls -lrt
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 mohan users 144 2009-07-13 19:19 Video-linux
drwxr-xr-x 2 mohan users 80 2009-07-28 23:09 public_html
drwxr-xr-x 2 mohan users 48 2009-07-28 23:09 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 mohan users 48 2009-08-09 09:30 Music
drwxr-xr-x 2 mohan users 48 2009-08-17 00:02 mohan
drwxr-xr-x 2 mohan users 120 2009-09-01 12:40 functionpointers
drwx

---

2 mohan users 120 2009-09-14 23:38 Documents
drwxr-xr-x 6 mohan users 392 2009-09-14 23:48 Desktop
root@mohan-desktop:/mnt/ravik#

mfillpot

Then that holds your home directory, the only other option is sda9, which I can pretty much guarantee is your ubuntu root directory, you can confirm it by showing us the output of "mount" and "cat /etc/fstab". If that is the case then ubuntu wrote itself over your suse installation.

ravi.chakram

That means here Ubuntu replaces the /boot partition of Suse with the Ubuntu /boot partition and left the /(root) and swap partitions of Suse unchange.