[PLUG] Can one add an OS on a second drive to GRUB[?]

[Robert Munro]

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On Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:32:24 Richard C. Steffens wrote:
> <snip>
> 
> 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?
> 

The short answer is, Yes. The slightly longer answer is, it is
complex, but the fact that both drives are SATA drives makes it
straightforward, more or less depending on how your motherboard BIOS
assigns the drives.

You can add an entry to /boot/grub/menu.lst on your primary hard
drive, pointing to the alternative OS on your secondary hard drive.

Hint: Code the root(hd?,?) and configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst entries.

The good news is that you can play around to make this work as long as
you don't change more than one thing at a time and test it thoroughly.

If you get carried away with wanting to boot multiple systems, on more
than two drives, perhaps including both SATA and SCSI disks, you might
need a rescue Live CD to straighten things out after you screw them up.

I've been there, done that. I revisit it about once a year when I take
the time to install new releases, having forgotten how much pain it is
in the meantime. I've slowed down and one of these years I might learn.

I have four hard drives in my desktop system, two 80GB SATA drives and
two 9GB SCSI drives, and have a different system on each one of these.
In addition, I use logical partitions for all of these systems. You do
not want to see the GRUB menu.lst files for this awkward configuration.

HTH,
Robert

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