Adding another distro to GRUB2?

[23dornot23d]

You may have it worked out there, that is probably why mine works ok and the one being set up does not ......

I always keep the same userid and username and set all of my accounts exactly the same .....
I have no issues swapping between systems ....... or booting up into them from GRUB2 even for SUSE

You seem to be saying its a good idea ...... to have different users and ids .... my experience on my system
that is set up only for me, may be different as it suits my way of working between desktops and OS's

I found that with using the same user accounts all my information is available to me from one OS to the
next .... (I would be surprised if this was as easy to do with different accounts and ids/passwords)

I am quite happy with the way the set up works too and have 3 OS's sharing the same /home.
and at least 12 more OS's now using there own /homes .....

I have never had a problem with passwords either ..... but as you say messing up the ones that share
the same /home all on the same drive too ....... could probably lead to some problems
(I have noticed a few odd things with settings but there but have never crashed or had any real visible problems).
I will watch what I do in the shared home more closely now though ....

[zarthon]

You may have it worked out there, that is probably why mine works ok and the one being set up does not ......

I always keep the same userid and username and set all of my accounts exactly the same .....I have no issues swapping between systems ....... or booting up into them from GRUB2 even for SUSE

23dornot23d, My experience is similar to yours. I have had only rare and application specific problems with sharing user accounts between different Linux installations. Where such an issue would start is after logging in. Even at that point it's rare because most programs now properly save settings for incompatible versions in separate folders.

I agree that user settings can cause problems that are difficult to troubleshoot but they are not boot or X11 problems. They always start after login.

A good trick for trouble shooting any such problems is to

#cp -a /home/jondoe/.* /home/johndoe/settingsbackup
## then reboot
#sudo shutdown -r now

You seem to be saying its a good idea ...... to have different users and ids .... .... passwords etc. etc.

If these should not match then someone sure had better rethink NIS!

This could have been a mess experienced but unresolved, and so feared and avoided, If usernames and Ids just kinda match but actually don't exactly file ownership breaks down and havoc ensues. Make sure early on when adding a new distro-version to the system that the new user id's match the existing linux distros and the /home partition. Since different distros start user id's at different numbers you must check and hack /etc/passwd to make the shared /home mount work properly. You can append the non-daemon users from the old distro onto the /etc/passwd of the new one.


It is suboptimal that user settings are stored in hidden files in each user's home folder. User data and user settings should be stored in different places that could be easily managed as separate mount points.

I have another trick to keep my data with me wherever I go. I separate out large parts of my own data from /home/jondoe/. I have separate lvm volumes that I mount at points below my user folder for documents pictures video and music. I paste these mounts to the end of /etc/fstab/ after creating my user and the mount point directories. This way I can choose to have an install with separate settings and still retain a good chunk of my data. I have found this is better than juggling settings files in and out of my user home folder.

IMNHO distribution installers should be asking if you have existing users and partitions that you want to use with the new installation and handle this in a self-adaptive fashion.

[23dornot23d]

You seem to be saying its a good idea ...... to have different users and ids .... my experience on my system
that is set up only for me, may be different as it suits my way of working between desktops and OS's

You have to take these two lines together ..... the context I meant this in ....

Was about easily sharing information across OS's and Desktops for one USER ..... it sounds odd now when I re-read it .... ( first thing in the morning ) obviously there should be no problem with having multiple users ..... the way I meant this to come out - was that to make it easier for me I do not use multiple id's.
I do not have to go around and make changes to my file system to make the files and directories RW ..... they are already set up for me ...... but if I had multiple users and accounts that would not be easily achieved .... which is the way it should be - otherwise each user could go into another users account and overwrite that users data with there own. *I hope this is clearer .....


Saying this then blows my theory out of the water ....

I agree that user settings can cause problems that are difficult to troubleshoot but they are not boot or X11 problems. They always start after login.

Because he should not have experienced a userid or account problem before logging into the Desktop.

My thought here now is that he may have had the same userid .... therefore having the same named ******/home ......... but maybe having a different password or other settings ,,,, that are causing a problem as he tries to go into it .....

I don't know ...... this is my best guess work here ......


So we really need to know from rsrini if the user was set up the same across the different systems giving in effect the same /home directory ..... (so that we can make any sense of this) and was this a shared /home between one or more systems ..... also were there any differences in the way he assigned the user files within this /home

But even here I am not sure that we are looking at the right thing .... why would it boot ok from GRUB 1.5 .......... and yet not boot ok from GRUB2.


What you have said gives me more confidence that the user being the same across the different OS's is alright to have -
if their individual user information is stored in different places for each OS ..... that is brilliant especially for same user names.
should mean I can have separate desktops for each user that use the same /home area.


But at least SUSE 11.3 works from GRUB 1.5 .... and if the auto boot into the system from GRUB1.5 can be made to work then I guess the OP ...... has a solution to this problem
(I guess the account and Userids are not a issue in this scenario either as it works ok)

[zarthon]

You have to take these two lines together
What you have said gives me more confidence that the user being the same across the different OS's is alright to have -
........
But even here I am not sure that we are looking at the right thing .... why would it boot ok from GRUB 1.5 .......... and yet not boot ok from GRUB2.

Those were the messages I was trying to convey, but I was primarily agreeing with you.

For Rsrini to eliminate the possiblity that it's a problem with user settings just backup the user settings with cp, and make sure that uids used in the filesystems match. Oh! And also, while passwords can differ across OS's for each OS it's /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow pair must match. man "shadow" and "pwconv" for more info.

/var/log/boot.log and "tail -n 150 /var/log/messages > /tmp/messages.post" would be useful as attachments for further trouble shooting.
You might use an external drive for booting up a bunch of OS's like i think 23dornot23d was talking about and keep the setup for the school simple?

A warning about Grub-install! It only updates the grub2 stage 1 in the mbr or partition boot area however it does nothing for the corresponding modules in /boot/grub! The grub2 that shipped with Ubuntu 9.10 is not compatible with the one from 10.04, and the one from MINT might be different from each of them. I don't think this is the problem because you would fail to the "grub rescue" prompt. ( That would also happen if /boot/grub had the stage 1.5 for grub (v1) and no grub2 modules. )

The conservative measure when upgrading a /boot mount in place is to back up /boot/grub before the upgrade to /boot/grub910 or /boot/grubmint. If it fails you will get a "grub rescue" prompt. If you can find the right module files either from a backup or another partition,

## For GRUB2 RESCUE prompt
#set prefix=<where the modules matching the loaded stage1 are>
#set root=<where the kernel and intit rd are>
#insmod normal
#normal

* There is a second step to get running after insmod normal to get up and running.I believe the command is normal but it could be something like loadnormal.

Use ls and ls / to find the right place for the modules. If after the normal* rescue command a menu comes up and it's the one you want you are good to go otherwise drop to healed grub2 prompt to boot manually.

I am not sure, but I think the menu ( grub.cfg ) used is from the $root/grub/grub.cfg and not $prefix/grub.cfg so it should match the setup in the partition you choose as root. Does anyone listening know this?


If you ever get into a mismatched uid or gid situation you can repair it using a one line script designed around the find command. (that is one line per uid that needs to be adjusted)

Aside comments

• 23dornot23d, I talk like there are multiple users on the system i referring to. The the other users are non-primary guest users. They are either logging in for file sharing or are borrowing my workstation mainly to get on-line so are a secondary concern to me than *my user*..lol. Its always good to consider if there were many others how would the setup be different?
• 23dornot23d,rsrini, What is attractive about the new SUSE?
• rsrini, If you start a new thread about this DVD you want to make please link back to this thread. I'd like to follow that topic too.

[23dornot23d]

23dornot23d,rsrini, What is attractive about the new SUSE?

I would love to be able to give you a run down on SUSE 11.3 ....... but my main reason for loading it up was to see how it had progressed from the last version I had tried a long time ago.
* In all honesty I prefer Debian based Distros ..... and the only benefit I have found so far is the Make Human application ...... which loads from the package manager.
( One disadvantage was not being able to get Cairo-Dock to work in SUSE 11.3 probably missing some plugins .... I will sort it )

Most of the things that I do are to do with Photography ..... 2D editing and 3D .....

The OS is of no real concern as long as its quick - stable and runs the software I want ....
and saves my files ok ......

I do like lots of desktops though ,,,, I have them all set out as I want them and its nice to open up Firefox and its got all the relevant info on the first set of tabs I open up ...... and it is a reminder where I left off ......
( Its good fun too ..... sometimes I get to a desktop and can quickly get up to speed from exactly where I left off .... some OS's do - do some task's a little better than others
Also running Blender 2.53 files separate from the 2.49b ones .......
Similar with Gimp 2.6 and 2.7 ...... although on one system I do have both of these running [Gimp 2.7 in a opt directory] as there are no compatibility problems.)

[rsrini]

Due to time constraints i did the work around for now. Used the Suse 11.3 grub1 as a chain loader from ubuntu 10.04 grub2. Made the grub1 waiting time as 0. I am getting a text screen immediately after grub2 menu start chain loading grub1. But it works. I definitely want to upgrade suse 11.3 with grub2 - not now.

I am sending the pc to the school now - updated with lot of education SW in ubuntu 10.04. I hope they enjoy the stuffs. I have to add 5 more thin clients to it next month.

I am going to buy one more similar PC for me now. In that i want to keep at least three (ubuntu, suse and fedora). Thanks for your help. I may need some more help.

Some people like suse. Somebody likes ubuntu. That is personal choice. I don't have any like to particular os. Only learning.