Fedora killed multi boot.

[mipcar]

Help, Well not the end of the earth but an inconvenience.
Had my partitions working. Had multi-booting happening with 3 mint versions, Main 6, KDE, XFCE.

Then in the last partition I installed Fedora.. It seemed to be okay as I tool it to ignore the other partitions aload to where I wanted it. Installed ok but now killed the boot options of other distros.

So I loaded Gparted live again, just reformatted the one partition that Fedora was in and thought I'd be okay, however still not getting boot options anymore and cannot laod my Mint distros.

It only get as far as a Grub> prompt.

Should my other distros still be okay? Their partitions appear to be untouched. Or will I have to do it all again.

Mychael

[DataMan]

High probability that your other partitions are ok. All you really need to do is to re-configure GRUB to recognize your last good GRUB installation. For conversations sake, let's assume it was on sda2.

1. Boot to a live CD
2. Once booted drop down to command line
3. $sudo GRUB
4. grub > root (hd0,1)
5. grub > setup (hd0)
6. Exit and re-boot

The above assumes your mbr is on hd0.

Hope this sorts things out for you.

DataMan

[mipcar]

The only Live Cd that would load was Gparted.. Given that I'd not lost data only time, I just reformatted and repartitioned and started over again.
Is this a Fedora "thing"? My 3 Mint version installs all played nicely together.

Should I avoid trying anything other then Mint versions to avoid a repeat of what happened?

Mychael

[altair4]

I know this isn't a popular position to take in a linux forum but I'm a firm believer in using 3rd party bootloaders. I use BootItNG for no other reason than it's what I started with years ago. It's not free or open source but there are many more that are free. They all work on the same principle.

You create a small partition and install the bootloader into it. It then overwrites the bootloader in the MBR with its own code and acts like a traffic cop to direct you to whatever OS you want to boot that day. You will then need to change the way you install every new OS. When the installer asks where you want install grub you tell it to install it in the root directory of wherever you installed the OS. For example if you have installed "/" for Mint in say sda3, when the installer asks you where you want to install grub your answer is sda3. You do that with every OS you install and each one is a self contained entity.
The exception to this methodology is Vista. In vista I would use EasyBCD which isn't a bootloader, it's an editor for Vista's bootloader that allows it to boot "foreign" OS's.

If you where dual booting this concept doesn't make much sense ( except for Vista ). But as soon as you start booting 3 or more then it brings a level of control and simplicity to your machine.

Just my opinion.

For a list of third party bootloaders you might take a look at this: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/managers.html

[Aging Technogeek]

Mike;

I'm not completely certain of this but I think Fedora uses the Lilo bootloader. This may be why it killed Grub. I'm not sure the two loaders are compatible.

[mipcar]

Okay, So even though I'd installed my distros in their own partitions, it did not protect my bootloader? I guess that would explain why after I re-formatted the partition that Fedora was in it still did not fix the issue.

I was going to try OpenSuSe 11.1 but maybe I shouldn't, do you know if it will "Fedora" me? It clearly safer for a newbie like me to stick with the old adage "birds of a feather" or in this case distro's.. Anything "Minty" is safe.

Mychael

[arnolds]

.......but I'm a firm believer in using 3rd party bootloaders. I use BootItNG for no other reason than it's what I started with years ago. It's not free or open source but there are many more that are free. They all work on the same principle.

I am using GAG now for a few years, and have no complaints.
It works with one or 2 hare drives.
I am not sure about the handling of Vista and Win7