Boot loader questions

[guns90]

Hello, first time here. I just installed mageia 2 as a tripple boot (my wife will only use windows and I wanted to keep what i know (mint) while I try out mageia). To install, I used windows 7 disk manager to delete the volume on the partition with another distro (Linux Lite) I had been trying, and rebooted with mageia 2 in my cd drive. I choose the first option (use free space). Now when I boot up, the mageia boot loader page shows up instead of the normal grub2 boot loader page. Linux Mint is no longer an option.

My options are:
Boot Mageia 2
Boot Mageia 2 (safe mode)
Boot Microsoft Windows
Boot desktop 3.3.6-2.mga2
Boot desktop 3.3.8-2.mga2

Mint still exists on the drive. Can I change the mageia boot loader page to show Linux Mint 13 also?

[tom_]

Welcome to the forum

The problem is that mint uses Grub2, mageia is still with grub1

so your bootloader is now grub...
if you search in the forum you'll find instruction on how to solve it, like

https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3614&p=26331&hilit=grub2#p26331
https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3664&p=26610&hilit=grub2#p26610

[doktor5000]

Now when I boot up, the mageia boot loader page shows up instead of the normal grub2 boot loader page. Linux Mint is no longer an option.

FWIW, Mageia installer, as all other linux installers so far by default will install itself in the master boot record, if you don't tell it otherwise.
For more information, check the documentation: http://doc.mageia.org/installer/2/en/co ... inner.html

[hintzy64]

If you know the partitions where the various OSes are installed (sda1, sda5, sdb1, etc), you should be able to add an entry to the bootloader menu via the bootloader setup tool in MCC. Sorry I can't be more specific with directions, I'm away from my Mageia machine at the moment. If you don't see what I'm referring to, I can try to give more detail later.

[doktor5000]

A chainload, which would be the easiest to setup, cannot be used currently AFAICT as Grub is not installed in the root partition of the other installation,
and in that case you'd need to specifiy the entries for kernel, initrd and root manually, same for the boot options.

[hintzy64]

Ah, good point. I've never had multiple linuxes before, didn't think about that.

[gohlip]

Unless you installed Linux Mint without installing bootloader (highly unlikely since you booted (previously) using its bootloader). you can always use Chainload. Grub should be installed in Linux Mint. Just that Mageia's bootloader is now set to sda (mbr) instead of Linux Mint when you installed Mageia.

Do you need further help, guns90? If you do, please provide output (as root) of "fdisk -lu", "blkid" (and tell us which partitions are what)
Also let us know whether you want Mageia'a boot or Linux Mint's bootloader to be set to mbr.
[edit]
ps: if you want Linux Mint set to mbr and you have the livecd, it is easier to use that livecd. Just that you may have to modify Maggeia's entry in Linux Mint's grub to include options like "vga=xxx" and "nokmsboot" and "BOOT_IMAGE=linux".
Also I am not familiar with Linux Mint, so provide grub version number as well (grub-install -v).