Peregrinations

It's Feisty, alright

Saturday Apr 21, 2007



Like many, I was tremendously excited to try the new Ubuntu release, Feisty Faun (7.04). So excited, perhaps, that I may have cut the usual corners, like backing up critical data on my laptop. Well, one gets so blase, doesn't one? The machine (an Acer Ferrari 4006) has Win XP on one partition, Ubuntu Dapper on the second and Solaris Express Developer Edition on the third.

Anyway, this morning I bravely plunged in with my freshly burned copy of Feisty, and hit the wall imemdiately. And this, really, is my error. So used have I become to Ubuntu practically installing itself that I was surprised that I actually needed to read instructions during the process. Unbelievable. After 20 minutes of swearing and repeatedly trying the same, failed operation, I read the instructions and actually specified my root partition as requested...and the rest was as easy as ever.

What I had not realised, however, was that the GRUB boot loader that a GNU/Linux OS installs does not work with Solaris. Naively, I had just expected to edit the GRUB menu from Ubuntu and bobs-your-uncle, triple boot again, as I have done so many times from the GRUB menu in Solaris. Not so. What I understand, having spent a thoroughly objectionable hour this morning (and naturally, entering into the same spirit myself) is that Linux's GRUB won't recognise the Solaris file system, which judging by the error messages I have researching (can one say regoogling?) this morning, adds up.

Anyway, I'm happy to say, docs.sun.com came to the my rescue. If, like me, you upgrade a Linux partition on a machine with a Solaris partition, and, like me, you're an idiot, here is what I recommend you do:

0. (Because I forgot to) Write down the GRUB entry for your Linux image
1. Boot one of the OpenSolaris live CD distos (Belenix works very well)
2. Mount your Solaris root partition
3. Reinstall your original GRUB using /sbin/installgrub
4. Reboot into your Solaris environment and add the Linux entries to GRUB

Really, I was quite surprised that Ubuntu's GRUB doesn't support Solaris filesystems. Apparently the fix has been submitted to the GRUB project and will be integrated eventually...

Anyway, someone once said, experience is knowledge, everything else is merely information.

So, Feisty's up, and it's very impressive. It is fantastic to be able to apt-get Java packages, it's full of nice surprises (and naturally, one or two disappointments), and generally feels very polished indeed. I do, however, rate the chances of getting my Broadcom wireless card up on a ndiswrapper or getting Beryl up on my ATI card as slim-to-narrow, at least, not before bedtime.

ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

pps. if anyone manages a more cack-handed install than that, please do let me know


[4] Comments
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Posted at 09:13PM Apr 21, 2007 by Patrick Finch in OpenSource
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as a long time debian user, let me give you a couple of hints:

1. Debian distributions can be upgraded from to release N to N+1 simply by changing /etc/apt/sources.list to point to the new release (via the online repository), invoking "aptitude dist-upgrade" or "apt-get dist-upgrade" from a text console in your running system, rebooting (because usually the kernel has been upgraded), and adjusting the few things that usually break.

I really don't know if this applies to ubuntu too --- you have to read the release notes. what I know for sure is that I burnt a debian cdrom around 1998, and since then I have apt-get dist-upgrade'd from one release to the next, without problems.

2. most OS installers nowadays are sinners, in the sense that they install the boot loader in the disk MBR instead of their own partiton's mbr. ubuntu's one, for instance does that without asking, while the debian's one asks before. among others, this has the ill effect of rendering your system diffcult to boot if you decide to wipe away the partition where menu.lst lives.

if you manage to install an instance of grub for each OS, in that OS own partition, and instruct them to chainload each other, your life becomes much easier at upgrade-time.

Posted by gbon on April 22, 2007 at 06:57 AM GMT-01:00 #

I have been looking to do a triple boot machine myself, currently I am running vista 64bit and Ubuntu Feisty fawn. Could you please write about what the best way is to install all three on a clean machine. I suppose the order is something like windows,linux,solaris ? esp considering the vista bootloader issues. I use FAT32 as a shared drive between my two OS's for all the data, but it that still an option with solaris, and/or is there a better solution ?

Posted by Henrik on April 22, 2007 at 07:28 PM GMT-01:00 #

Henrik, The best order is Windows, then Ubuntu, then Solaris. Once you've installed Ubuntu, boot it and copy the file /boot/grub/menu.lst Once you've installed Solaris, you will need to insert the entries for Ubuntu by hand. Note that this process doesn't work the other way: the GNU/Linux GRUB is not compatible with Solaris. Yes, a FAT32 partition should be readable by all three OS's, although I have had difficulties getting Solaris to mount my FAT 32 partition (I am sure it is easy enough, I just haven't found the documentation). Windows and Ubuntu mount it automatically.

Posted by Patrick on May 21, 2007 at 07:09 AM GMT-01:00 #

I have a similar issue with the damn triple boot....I had installed windows first, then ubuntu fiesty, then solaris ...not knowing that solaris and fiesty would have the grub issue....like the guy above I also didn't write or copy the grub config from ubuntu. how do i get this info with out messin up my solaris 10...and where would i find the info in solaris where the grub is located within solaris...to set up the dual grub triple boot

Posted by Josh on May 27, 2007 at 02:29 AM GMT-01:00 #

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