[SOLVED] booting debian

[handers]

I have an old version of DSL installed, followed by XP. On a further partition I installed Debian 6.
Installation of Debian went smoothly, including the final detection of the other two OS for Grub. I had expected that the Debian-version of Grub would override/overwrite the one that came when I installed DSL.
It did not - when I boot, Grub comes up with the old DSL menu, in which Debian is not included.

From what I've been reading about Grub, there's two "fases", first in MBR, that points to the second part where the actual boot-commands are given, in my case stored in DSL.
When I open the Grub config-file in Debian, both DSL and XP are correctly listed.

Now I'm not sure what to do - I'm a bit hesitant to try and point grub-fase-1 to Debian (if I can write the correct lines at all, I'm very insecure on that) - if that fails, I cannot boot at all. But I'm not really sure either how to formulate a new rule in the DSL-grub, to make Debian boot from the existing menu.

Need I say I'm pretty new at Linux? - thank you kindly for your patience & advice.

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Boot up Debian and execute this in Terminal :

su -
update-grub

Reboot machine and check if Debian's GRUB Menu appear at startup.

[handers]

thank you devils casper - do you want me to boot Debian from the live-cd?

[devils casper]

Boot up from Hard disk only. There is different procedure for GRUB re-install/update using LiveCD.
Doesn't Debian boot up?

[handers]

thnks devils casper, please excuse if I did not make myself clear in my initial question: no, debian is installed fine on the HD, but I have an older GRUB which does not show Debian, and which was not overwrittten when I installed Debian - I can try and make a new command for Debian in the old GRUB, but I'm not really sure how to do that

[fanderal]

I haven't burned Debian to CD for a while but I think the choice is between live-only or install-only images. However, the install CD can be booted to an ncurses rescue mode to install grub.

[yancek]

I'm not clear on your situation. Are you able to boot Debian installed on the hard drive?
You indicate you have DSL installed and its Grub menu comes up with no entry for Debian, is that correct?
Whatever system you can boot, DSL or Debian, do so and run the command: fdisk -l (Lower case Letter L in the command) as root user and post the output here indicating which partitions you believe Debian and DSL to be on. I don't use Debian myself so I am not sure if it uses Grub2. You can ascertain this by looking in the /boot/grub directory to see if there is a menu.lst file (Grub Legacy) or a grub.cfg file (Grub2) and post this information here.

Reinstalling or updating Grub isn't that difficult if partitions are known.

[devils casper]

I can try and make a new command for Debian in the old GRUB, but I'm not really sure how to do that

It looks like Debian installer hasn't installed GRUB of Debian and you have to either install Debian GRUB or add it's entry in DSL GRUB Menu.
Boot up DSL and mount / partition of Debian. Check the contents of /boot/grub folder of Debian. Does it have grub.conf or grub.cfg file?

As yancek already suggested, post the output of fdisk -l command here.
Do you have Debian LiveCD?

[handers]

thank you for your answers

so DSL is on hda2, Debian is on hda4
these are partial copies from either /boot/grub files:

From DSL-grub-menu.lst
(...)
timeout 15
# Enter the entry for DSL here. Something like this.
title DSL
kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/hda2 quiet vga=normal noacpi noapm nodma noscsi frugal

title DSL fb800x600
kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/hda2 quiet vga=788 noacpi noapm nodma noscsi frugal
etc (...)

From the Debian-grub.cfg:
(...)
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
menuentry 'Debian GNU/Linux, with Linux 2.6.32-5-686' --class debian --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='(hd1,msdos4)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set db1bc14c-f8a0-48bb-abb9-e6fbd60e0118
echo 'Loading Linux 2.6.32-5-686 ...'
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-686 root=UUID=db1bc14c-f8a0-48bb-abb9-e6fbd60e0118 ro quiet
echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-5-686
etc(...)

so I suppose it is, in terms of Yancek, Grub Legacy, that lists the boot menu when I start the computer - again I'm not really sure how exactly to phrase a new entry in the Grub Legay menu (or, what happens if, when I finally get to boot Debian properly, I use the command "update grub" - will that overwrite the present entry for Grub Legacy in the MBR? will the machine boot at all, after that?)

[devils casper]

If you have Debian LiveCD or you can boot up in Rescue mode of Debian, update-grub will solve problem. GRUB2 will detect all installed OSes and generate new GRUB Menu. It will overwrite GRUB of DSL.

Or
You can add an entry of Debian in DSL's grub.conf file. For that, we have check files available in /boot folder of Debian.
Mount / partition of Debian in DSL and post the output of ls <Debian's boot folder> here. We will post instructions to add an entry of Debian in DSL Grub Menu.