[gentoo-user] Re: How to set up drive with many Linux distros?

[Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>]

On 2024-02-23, Wojciech Kuzyszyn <wkuz@op.pl> wrote:

> I guess most (all) of the distro's you are talking about use GRUB (or
> at least they allow to do it).

Yes, I belive that they are all now using Grub2.

> If that's true, I'm pretty sure you can happily let them overwrite
> the GRUB in MBR as many times as they want, since it's the same (or
> just probably minor version differences) bootloader. Just make a
> copy of /boot/grub/grub.cfg and make sure it's the same on every
> partition.

That means I have to update all of those grub.cfg files manually every
time I install or update a distro. That's a lot of work.

> Or, even better, if that's possible right now, make a common /boot
> partition and after installing the new distro just merge the
> (probably new) /boot/grub/grub.cfg with your old one.

"just merge the new grub.cfg file with the old one" is the problem.

I tried that for a while: every time a distro got installed, I would
add it to the "main" grub config file. Every time a distro got a
kernel update, I'd modify the main grub config file. It was a lot more
work that my current scheme (and a lot more error prone).

> I really think that *should* work!

It would work, but maintaining the grub.cfg files is a lot of
work. The scheme I'm using now doens't require me to mess with any of
the grub.cfg files when distros get updated or installed.

--
Grant