[Solved] grub dual boot from second hard drive question

[ToddAndMargo]

Hi All,

I am going to be upgrading a customer on Monday from XP to Kubuntu 9.04. I am going to remove his original hard drive and install Kubuntu on a new, fresh hard drive.

After I get Kubuntu installed, I will reinstall his old hard drive as a second hard drive.

I would like to make his old hard drive bootable through grub. I am familiar with CentOS 5.x. In Cent, I have a file called /etc/boot/grub.conf in which I can configure it to boot off a second hard drive. I am not finding such a file in Kubuntu. Am I even using grub? And how would I go about making the second hard drive a boot choice?

Many thanks,
-T

[dibl]

Re: grub dual boot from second hard drive question

I think you're making it harder than it needs to be. What you want to do is what *buntu does automatically, in the presence of an existing Windows installation.

Just jumper the second hard drive as "cs" and install it -- leave the existing one there. Boot the computer and check BIOS and make sure the new drive is found, and that Win XP still boots correctly (its disk needs to be at a higher "boot priority" than the new one, and the CD ROM drive needs to be first priority for booting).

At this point, I personally use a Parted Magic or GParted Live CD, and partition my intended victim, and format the new partition with the filesystem type that I want.

Now boot the Kubuntu Live or Alternate Install CD, and start the installer. Point it at the partition(s) where you want Kubuntu and let it install. At the end of the installation process, the default behavior is to install Grub on the MBR, and set Win XP as an alternate bootable OS (below the "Debian Defaults" line). Just let it do that.

Reboot the computer and you should have a system that will automatically boot Kubuntu, unless you scroll down in the first few seconds and highlight Windows to be booted.

[ToddAndMargo]

Re: grub dual boot from second hard drive question

Hi dibl,

Thank you for the excellent write up! Unfortunately, I forgot to add to my original post that there must be absolutely no change of any data on the original hard drive being corrupted. The only absolute way of doing this is to remove the original hard derive during installation of Kubuntu on the new drive. Any loss of data on the original hard drive would be a disaster or indescribable scale.

So, how do I do it the hard way. I am really, really good at "vi".

Many thanks,
-T

[dibl]

Re: grub dual boot from second hard drive question

OK, then you are doomed to study Qqmike's Grub dissertation here:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3081671.0

Just pull the power plug on the Windows drive -- that will disable it for your exercise. But you still need to verify that your second drive shows up in BIOS correctly, and if it is SATA you may need to twiddle the "mode" to get Kubuntu to see it and install on it -- depending on your chipset and BIOS.

With the second drive installed, and the Windows drive unpowered, you should be able to do your partitioning and then install Kubuntu with no issues. With Grub installed on the MBR of the new hard drive, you are going to have to make that drive a higher boot priority than the Windows drive, or you'll never see Grub. You also may need to re-jumper the Windows drive and make it an IDE "slave" to keep it from being booted first.

If you are mixing IDE/PATA and SATA drives, watch for a mismatch between what the installer sees as "#1" and what Grub sets as #1, when the Windows drive is powered back on. If you get a Grub Error 13, that's probably what's going on. You can find out by pushing "e" on the grub menu line and changing the "hd" number from 0 to 1, or vice versa.

Good luck!

[ToddAndMargo]

[Solved] Re: grub dual boot from second hard drive question

OK, then you are doomed to study Qqmike's Grub dissertation here:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3081671.0

Great reference! Thank you.

-T