Changing to grub-legacy in LMDE

[Zalbor]

(Feel free to skip the first paragraph, the real question is afterwards)
Hello, I've been an Ubuntu user for years but I'm planning a switch to Mint. I'm between waiting for Mint 11 next month and switching to LMDE, so I've tried Mint 10 and LMDE in virtual machines to see if I can customise them the way I want.

I've tried to replace Grub 2 with Grub Legacy on LMDE (the main reason being that I want to use a password to lock certain options in the Grub menu, and I'll consider Grub 2 to be an alpha until it can do what Grub 1 did -but I digress). I tried to do it the same way I've been doing it in Ubuntu, which is to remove grub-pc, grub-common and os-prober, reinstall the latter two with grub-legacy, then run update-grub, grub-install and setup from the grub console. Most of that works fine, but when I get to grub-install it fails with "Problem reading stage1 file". I've tried reinstalling the package and deleting the grub directory to have it rebuilt by update-grub but the same thing always happens.

Is there something more I'm supposed to do, or is the Debian Testing grub-legacy package broken?

[DataMan]

I hope I'm interpreting your posting correct inasmuch as you are attempting to install Mint Debian but want to use a GRUB legacy that you already have installed.

If that is the case, there is an option within the Gnome Mint Debian installer to skip the installation of GRUB altogether. If you select it, the installer will "crab" at you a couple of times. Forget it and proceed with the installation.

Post-install, you will need to access your working menu.lst and add a stanza for your new Debian installation.

I just went through this the last weekend with my dedicated GRUB legacy partition.

Hope I interpreted your posting correct and this addresses your question.

-DataMan

[Zalbor]

Hi, thanks for the reply. But unfortunately no, that's not what I meant.

Installing LMDE (or other current/recent distros) installs Grub 2 by default. I want to remove it and replace it with Grub Legacy, but the way I've been doing that for Ubuntu doesn't work with LMDE.

[zerozero]

hi Zalbor,
probably you are using this how-to http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? ... rub+legacy ?
i used it to do the same with Mint9 and it works, but atm LMDE has a newer grub v. and some things have changed, like for example chainload os with grub legacy though the 40_costum.
In LMDE i haven't try to do this, so don't know if that how-to works, if it was the one you were following, can't help you, sorry