Temporarily booting into a new root partition w/grub2

[psych1610]

Hi all! Yesterday I cloned my root partition with clonezilla! After booting though I discovered that they both had the same UUID and so what I did to one, I did to the other (this is the only way I could figure it out at least). I messed around with grub2 for nearly 3 hours now and I think it's time to call it quits.

Here's what I would like to do (and I know it must be dead simple!): Have a separate root partition to test major updates and other stuff so that I don't hose my working one.

As mentioned before I can successfully clone it and give it a unique UUID. I've even managed to get grub2 to recognize it and boot it by itself. I can't decide if I want it to appear on the grub menu though, and if I do, what kind of effects it will have when I test the updates and it over writes itself?

As of now I see my normal Linux Mint Kernel, Linux Mint Kernel (Recovery), and Windows 7 on there. Ideally there would be a nice new entry for Linux Kernel (Image) or something. I did manage to get it to where there were two separate entries for the "Image" partition, but this wasn't ideal and it seemed like the image was in charge in the 10_linux, 06_mint_theme, and 05_debian_theme (it was the only one mentioned).

If I decide I don't want it on the grub menu permanently is there a way I can temporarily get into it by editing/changing the grub2 parameters on the boot screen?

I'm sure I'm making this much harder than it needs to be but I'm unsure of where else to go to make this right! Help, please.

[seeley]

Hi!
Maybe I don't understand what you really want.
I always had multiboot systems and sometimes I installed a 32 and a 64 bit version of a distribution or a Gnome and a KDE version; what I want to say:
You could twice install each Linux you want - maybe with different languages (I did that many times) or different user names.
seeley

[psych1610]

Hi, thanks for responding. I ended up figuring it out to my satisfactions, for now. I'm sure something will break again later.

[willie42]

I have on my Laptop installed 2 Linux Mint 10 installs and had 2 kernels to boot from so if I understand you want to install 2 LMDEs use one for normal use and the other for testing so you dont mess up your normal use one. Its all in the partitioning of the hard drive(s) If you give more details l possibly could assist you.