Detecting systems booting with GRUB2 in anaconda
Hi,
I was asked about problem with installing Fedora 13 on a machine
that is dual booting Windows 7 and another distro using GRUB2.
There is nothing about GRUB2 in Installation Guide
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/13/html/Installation_Guide/s1-x86-bootloader.html
"To add, remove, or change the detected operating system settings, use the
options provided."
It is not clear is anaconda capable to detect properly such distro
that uses GRUB2 and add it as additional system to Fedora GRUB menu list?
Here is e-mail that I received about this problem:
> And Fedora has made my ubuntu installation unreachable (remember I'm a
> novice). I expected GRUB2 like behavior - list the available OSes.
> Instead I have Fedora and Other, with other pointing to Windows 7.
> > You can try to add Ubuntu to this grub.conf
>
> Unfortunately, it looks like I was nailed pretty good on this one.
> Though a novice, I know that fdisk -l and blockid give me a lot of
> info. So I know the Ubuntu device (/dev/sda5), but Fedora complains
> when trying to mount it ("Error mounting: wrong fs type, bad option,
> bad superblock on /dev/sda5"). Booting from a Ubuntu LiveCD is the
> same.
>
> fschk -f /dev/sda5 - no joy. And trying to repair the superblock by
> hand with e2fsck, dumpe2fs and friends has not helped. I think I'm too
> ignorant of the file system to correct the problems that the installer
> created.
>
> Perhaps you could ask the Fedora team to add a test case: Install
> Fedora on a machine that is dual booting Windows 7 and distro> using GRUB2. The results might be alarming considering I did
> not receive one warning for the operation.
Alexey Kurov
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Re: Detecting systems booting with GRUB2 in anaconda
On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 10:00 PM, wrote: > There is nothing about GRUB2 in Installation Guide I'm not sure why there would be an expectation that their would be. Fedora doesn't use Grub2. There are many possible bootloaders that could be on a system. Do we mention any of them by name anywhere? We do have this just above the snippet you quote: "You may have a boot loader installed on your system already. An operating system may install its own preferred boot loader, or you may have installed a third-party boot loader.If your boot loader does not recognize Linux partitions, you may not be able to boot Fedora" How do we make it any clearer than that? -jef -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Detecting systems booting with GRUB2 in anaconda
What can expect user that have system booting with GRUB2 and installing Fedora? It is natural to expect that after Fedora installation will be bootable both systems Fedora and other distro. But if GRUB2 can not be detected there should be some kind of warning about that. This is the reason why it may be described in Installation Guide. Fedora 14 Installation Guide have some mention about GRUB2 but it is still not clear is anaconda capable to detect it. http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/14/html/Installation_Guide/s1-x86-bootloader.html Jeff Spaleta wrote: > On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 10:00 PM, wrote: >> There is nothing about GRUB2 in Installation Guide > > I'm not sure why there would be an expectation that their would be. > Fedora doesn't use Grub2. There are many possible bootloaders that > could be on a system. Do we mention any of them by name anywhere? > We do have this just above the snippet you quote: > > "You may have a boot loader installed on your system already. An > operating system may install its own preferred boot loader, or you may > have installed a third-party boot loader.If your boot loader does not > recognize Linux partitions, you may not be able to boot Fedora" > > How do we make it any clearer than that? > > -jef -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Detecting systems booting with GRUB2 in anaconda
On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 10:32 PM, wrote: > Fedora 14 Installation Guide have some mention about GRUB2 > but it is still not clear is anaconda capable to detect it. > http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/14/html/Installation_Guide/s1-x86-bootloader.html There is one reference to GRUB 2 to help clarify that Fedora does not use it. There's no suggestion anywhere that it or any other alternative bootloader is detectable or supported. Also there is this: "If you have other operating systems already installed, Fedora attempts to automatically detect and configure GRUB to boot them. You may manually configure any additional operating systems if GRUB does not detect them." There is an attempt made but there's no effort to list which operating system that can be successfully detected. No specific operating system is named as being known to be detectable. -jef -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Detecting systems booting with GRUB2 in anaconda
tis 2010-11-02 klockan 00:32 +0200 skrev alekc...@googlemail.com: > What can expect user that have system booting with GRUB2 and installing > Fedora? It is natural to expect that after Fedora installation will be > bootable both systems Fedora and other distro. As with all boot loaders it depends on where the other boot loader is installed, and what the user selects during install. If GRUB2 is installed in the MBR then Fedora will quite likely overwrite it. If GRUB2 is installed in a partition boot block then it should easily integrate with Fedora, but user may need to explicitly add the partition to the boot screen during or after installation. And some care in setting the right partition bootable is needed when selecting to install Fedora grub in a partition boot sector to play nice with other bootloaders, or else the other boot loader will still boot after reboot. Or in short words, PC partition table booting is a mess to work with. Regards Henrik -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
