TRIPLE BOOT From Separate Hard Drives

[nam5301]

Okay, I have Backtrack 4 R2 and Windows 7 Ultimate x64 installed on C:, and I have Linux Ubuntu 10.10 installed on D: . Backtrack and windows are partitions of C: while Linux Ubuntu is installed entirely on D:. What I want to know is if it was possible to triple boot this way? or does every operating system has to be installed on the same hard drive? do we have to re-config GRUB? If so how?

If you are going to ask why I installed Linux Ubuntu when I already have Backtrack, my answer is for the cool desktop effects and themes. I like Ubuntu's slick themes. i hear you can install those themes on backtrack but I dont know how. KDE theme is kinda plain.

[jirtos]

Okay, I have Backtrack 4 R2 and Windows 7 Ultimate x64 installed on C:, and I have Linux Ubuntu 10.10 installed on D: . Backtrack and windows are partitions of C: while Linux Ubuntu is installed entirely on D:. What I want to know is if it was possible to triple boot this way? or does every operating system has to be installed on the same hard drive? do we have to re-config GRUB? If so how?

If you are going to ask why I installed Linux Ubuntu when I already have Backtrack, my answer is for the cool desktop effects and themes. I like Ubuntu's slick themes. i hear you can install those themes on backtrack but I dont know how. KDE theme is kinda plain.

Ofc its possible to triple boot this way. It only depends if u didnt foked up the instalation of bootloaders. What is the loader that pops up on first boot? GRUB or NT loader (or LILO of selected)? For dual/triple/x boot is grub more flexible, so use that crap.

generally speaking when instaling more OSs (having more bootloaders):
There's no standard for where the boot loader should store its data. The boot loader will normally occupy a space on your drive called the 'Master Boot Record' (MBR) but this is just as volatile as any other part of your hard drive. As a result, you may find that occasionally your MBR will be overwritten during system maintenance or an OS upgrade - thats why u probably should start the proces from scratch, and not to mess around, cos in these cases, the boot menu provided by either Grub or Lilo will disappear and you will instead boot into the default operating system without any other options. To repair your installation in these cases, have a Live Linux CD to reinstall the boot loader - thats why "starting form scratch".

simply: install Windows, instal BT, install Ubuntu (in this order) and GRUB should start after BIOS post. if there is only two options (like Win and Ubuntu) u can add more systems simply by editing GRUB conf:

Go to "/boot/grub/"
Open "menu.lst" file as root
Add the lines like this to the file and save it:
title LINUX2 (WTF DISTRO)
root (hd1,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

just be sure to install Windows first, or they will fok it up.

[AlphaandOmega]

Yes it can be done, and it's actually quite easy. I'm going to hold your hand on this, but I'm not going to spoon feed you everything.

GRUB is what you'll use to get it done. If you've installed BT last, it may have already set everything up for you. The GRUB menu may just be loading BT too fast to see it. If GRUB didn't set everything up for you...go into the /boot/grub dir on your BT install and edit a file named menu.lst

I'm not into Ubuntu ( I prefer Debian ) so I don't even know if it uses GRUB, either way, if you read up on GRUB, and use your BT menu.lst as a reference, you should be able to figure it out. ( If Ubuntu does use GRUB then it's a cut and paste for the Ubuntu part). As for the windows part, try your best for a day and if you can't figure out the menu.lst code to get an M$ product to load, come back here and I'll help you a bit more.

[nam5301]

thanks for reminding me, i forgot to mention that I installed WIndows 7 Ultimate x64 FIRST, Backtrack 4 R2 SECOND, Ubuntu THIRD. But Ubuntu is installed in a separate hard drive. And the boot order in BIOS is C: then D:, and GRUB menu doesn't have Linux Ubuntu on the list, just Backtrack and Windows.

So I'll try what you guys have suggested and see what happens. Thanks!

[nam5301]

Ofc its possible to triple boot this way. It only depends if u didnt foked up the instalation of bootloaders. What is the loader that pops up on first boot? GRUB or NT loader (or LILO of selected)? For dual/triple/x boot is grub more flexible, so use that crap.

generally speaking when instaling more OSs (having more bootloaders):
There's no standard for where the boot loader should store its data. The boot loader will normally occupy a space on your drive called the 'Master Boot Record' (MBR) but this is just as volatile as any other part of your hard drive. As a result, you may find that occasionally your MBR will be overwritten during system maintenance or an OS upgrade - thats why u probably should start the proces from scratch, and not to mess around, cos in these cases, the boot menu provided by either Grub or Lilo will disappear and you will instead boot into the default operating system without any other options. To repair your installation in these cases, have a Live Linux CD to reinstall the boot loader - thats why "starting form scratch".

simply: install Windows, instal BT, install Ubuntu (in this order) and GRUB should start after BIOS post. if there is only two options (like Win and Ubuntu) u can add more systems simply by editing GRUB conf:

Go to "/boot/grub/"
Open "menu.lst" file as root
Add the lines like this to the file and save it:
title LINUX2 (WTF DISTRO)
root (hd1,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

just be sure to install Windows first, or they will fok it up.

================================================== =====


I tried exactly as you instructed above and even type different hd numbers, but it tells me cannot find device or partition. Maybe I am telling it to look in the wrong place? Well here's a screen shot of my hard drives in BIOS. Hopefully it can help you to help me solve this problem. The Device on Channel 4 Master is where Ubuntu 10.10 is installed and Channel 0 Master is the hard drive for Windows 7 and Backtrack . And all those [None] slots are empty SATA ports in my gigabyte motherboard, by the way, channel 4 master is IDE and Channel 0 Master is Sata.

[jirtos]

The BIOS setup is little useless for this. GRUB does use the order of disk in BIOS, that means:

hda = master on primary ide cable
hdb = slave on primare ide cable
hdc = master on secoundary ide
hdd = slave on secoundary ide

,but the main things are partitions:

Hard drive's as seen by GRUB
hda partition 1 = (hd0,0) partition 2 (hd0,1) ect....
hdb partition 1 = (hd1,0) partition 2 (hd1,1) ect....
hdc
hdd
hde
hdf
hdg

In order to use grub to boot a computer, you need to know the following:
A.The partition containing the kernel
B.Within that partition, the directory path and filename of the kernel
C.The partition containing /sbin/init

On my SLAck (where i am right now, no time for BT to start), its simle:
$ cat /boot/grub/device.map
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdb
.
.
.

to help with the "where r my partition" business, just use fdisk -l for listing disks and partitions and alo, the grub command like this:
grub> find /sbin/init
(hd0,8)
(hd0,11)
(hd1,11)
grub>

grub> find /boot/vmlinuz
(hd0,11)
(hd1,11)
grub>

[AlphaandOmega]

I'll keep this short and sweet. Ignore the posting that you used to try and resolve this problem. As for what is and what is not listed in your BIOS, certain formats, i.e..ntfs will cause the BIOS to not "see" the drive such that it will list it.

Are you able to boot off of the C: drive ( and I mean boot both BT and Windows by menu selection ) ?
Are you able to boot off of your D: drive ( you may have to either change boot order or perform a selective boot ) ?

If the answer is yes, you can boot all 3 systems one way or another, then just edit your menu.lst on the BT install on the C: drive ( found in /boot/grub ) to include the code from the Ubuntu menu.lst

If you can boot into all 3 systems, and are not completely comfortable editing your menu.lst, then PM me both menu.lst files and I'll do it for you.