Non-intrusive installation (ie, hide the bootloader?)

[audigex]

Hey

I'm wanting to install an ubuntu variant alongside my Win7 install, but I want my system to presume it's loading Win7 unless I specifically tell it otherwise.

The Ubuntu will be on a seperate partition, and I assume that it'll install GRUB or whatever when installed. I've not got a lot of experience with ubuntu, but one of my recollections is that I had to choose my OS every time it booted up - and that's not what I want.

I know it's only a single button but that's beside the point, I want to not see the existance of ubuntu unless I press a button at the right time in the boot process.

Any advice on how to achieve this would be appreciated

[yancek]

If you install Ubuntu and put Grub bootloader in the master boot record, Grub will give you choices on which OS to boot from a menu. If you want it to boot by default to win 7, you just need to set your default entry to win 7. In the menu.lst file in /boot/grub yo will have a line at the top which says:

default 0

Since Grub counts from zero (0), the entry above would automatically boot the first title entry in menu.lst.

title Ubuntu
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic root=UUID=308b4b12-7416-4327-a4d2-a1758021e33a ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-16-generic

title Win 7
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

In the example above, Ubuntu is first, win 7 is second so you would change the default entry to: default 1

There is a timeout line near the top of the file which tells how many seconds to wait before booting the default which you can set. I would not set it to 0 because then you won't see the option to boot Ubuntu when you choose to.

Hope this is what you wanted.

[D-cat]

In addition, a line under the timeout x that simply says hiddenmenu will accomplish the task of not showing the menu unless you press ESC at the moment the menu would otherwise be displayed...

## GRUB /boot/menu.lst
default 1
timeout 3
hiddenmenu

title 1st Entry (0)...

Would automatically fire off the second menu entry with no feedback after 3 seconds unless you pressed ESC in that 3 seconds.

GNU GRUB Manual 0.97

[audigex]

Fantastic, thanks - that's exactly what I was looking for.