Dual booting Suse and Solaris

[branh0913]

Hello. I am currently going from my first SCSA Solaris certification. and because of that I installed Solaris on my system. It has been a pretty ardous couple of days, and I've come across some pretty embarassing results too.

First, the timeline. I was running Windows XP home, and was under the erroneous idea that I had two hard drives. Actually, my laptop had 1 hard drive, but it was parititioned into two drives. Well, thinking this, I attempted to install Solaris not realizing it was one drive. The results? Solaris installed okay, but Windows XP was wiped out.

I figured, no bother. I'll just reload Windows and get my disc. Well, I don't have my windows disc anymore. I loaned it to my mother, and forgot I did. Well, my mother misplaces stuff a lot stuff, and my disc has been replaced.

hmm, So I said FINE, I'll just install Linux. Come to find out, Suse is suppose to work great with my Dell Laptop. So, I went to go install the ISOs for Suse 10.2. Installation was great,btw.

But now my new dillemma is that I can't dual boot it with Solaris. I know this is simple. But I am not sure what Suse is booting. When I installed Suse, it came with its own version of Grub (a prettier, glossier, and apparently more useless version of the Grub that came with my Solaris 10). In either case, I know I could just edit one of the lines in Grub on Solaris, and have it boot Suse. But umm, how do I do this? I know I can just add a new line in my Solaris bootloade, and it will give me an option to boot Suse. I know Suse is there. As to why it doesn't show up in Grub, I don't know. Apparently it keeps overwriting my boot loaders everytime I install over Solaris or I install over Suse. There actual partitions never change though, and the data is STILL there.


I currently have two partitions. I have one partition that is 40 GB and another which is 40 GB. Both are 40 GB partions (my max drive is 80GB). So PLEASE could you guys help. I am apparently too stupid to figure this out. and YES, I do need Solaris there.

[daark.child]

If I were you, I would have installed openSUSE first. I would then boot into openSUSE and use fdisk to create a Solaris partition (and also make note of the openSUSE grub entry in /boot/grub/menu.lst). After that I would then install Solaris and then edit the openSUSE /boot/grub/menu.lst and add an entry similar to the one below

title Solaris Express
        rootnoverify (hd1,0)
        makeactive
        chainloader +1

The rootnoverify part has to match the device and partition number on which you installed Solaris (grub starts counting from 0 by the way). If Solaris overwrites your openSUSE grub (which I doubt it will) you can just edit its /boot/grub/menu.lst and add the openSUSE entry you made a note of earlier. Personally, Solaris has never overwritten my GRUB if I chose not to install it on the bootdisk.

[devils casper]

chainloading works only if you install Boot Loader in boot sector of partition. if you opt not to install Boot Loader anywhere during installation, you have to add correct title, root, kernel ( vmlinuz file name ) and initrd lines in grub configuration file.

[branh0913]

Thanks guys. I am going to follow Darkchild's advice, and wipe out both OpenSuse and then Solaris. I'll let you guys know the results. glad to be here. I donBt know squat aboUt Linux, but I am at least mediocore in Solaris. Linux is so different in ,any ways fro, Solaris. The fdisk sems to work a lot like FORMAT under Solaris. I'll be making use of these forums, as I am a Linux newbie. Hope I can up my Linux and Solaris game, and MAYBE one day help out myself.

[daark.child]

chainloading works only if you install Boot Loader in boot sector of partition. if you opt not to install Boot Loader anywhere during installation, you have to add correct title, root, kernel ( vmlinuz file name ) and initrd lines in grub configuration file.

Thats definitely spot on for Linux. Solaris (well 10 and above) doesn't give you the option not to install a bootloader. The GRUB bootloader is automatically installed on the Solaris slice (partition) so chainloading should work.

[bigtomrodney]

Solaris uses Grub to boot too, why not try to mount the solaris partition and make a copy of the grub configuration? You can add the Solaris entries to the SUSE menu.lst and you should be good to go. I wouldn't go removing any systems yet.

Actually doesn't the Solaris install CD allow you to boot into a 'live' CLI environment?