[sclug] [Fwd: Grub bootloader issue]

[Neil Haughton]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Grub bootloader issue
Date: 	Fri, 18 Feb 2005 18:31:40 +0000
From: 	Neil Haughton <n.a.haughton at bigfoot.com>
To: 	sclug at sclug.org.uk
References: 	<200502172140.j1HLefE7023110 at l-oeuf.tmdg.co.uk>



Hi people,

re my Grub issue,

>>/boot/grub/menu.lst
>>
>>or
>>
>>/boot/grub/grub.conf
>>    
>>
Nothing like those anywhere.


Actually my 'normal' distro is Mandrake, which uses lilo. On a spare 
partition I installed DeMuDi (I think that means Definitive Music 
Distro), a debian based music-studio distro, and that placed the present 
Grub bootloader over my old Lilo. It works okay, but curiously I can't 
find any grub config stuff on the DeMuDi side of things  - not a 
sausage.  I presume if boot into Mandrake, log in as root and then mount 
the Demundi filesystem (ie mount /dev/hda8 /mnt/demundi) I will have 
root permissions for any files in the DeMuDi filesystem? (In other 
words, root is root is root across distros?)  If so, I can see hordes of 
files but nothing grub-like at all.

I suppose I could always restore the Mandrake Lilo bootlooader, but I'd 
like to get to the bottom of this, if anyone can help.

Neil.

5 minutes later:

I've got it! root is NOT root is NOT root across distros, it seems. I booted into the DeMuDi distro, 
logged in as root, and immediately found a load of files in the /boot/grub directory that I hadn't been able to see as root in Mandrake.
Edited /boot/grub/menu.lst and hey presto, job done.

So I suppose the question is now: if I have a number of Linux machines running different distros on the same network, 
how do I administer them? (I suppose the next question is why would I want such a set up in the first place, 
but bear with me - let's just say I walked into such a situation in a large company.)
Can it be done? Can I seamlessly mount more than one distro into the same filesystem?

Neil.