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

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

On 2024-02-23, Wols Lists <antlists@youngman.org.uk> wrote:
> On 23/02/2024 00:28, Grant Edwards wrote:

>> In my experience, <distro>'s bootloader does not boot other
>> installations by calling other bootloaders. It does so by rummaging
>> through all of the other partitions looking for kernel images,
>> intird files, grub.cfg files, etc.  It then adds menu entries to
>> the config file for <distro>'s bootloader which, when selected,
>> directly load the kernel image and initrd from those other
>> partitions. Sometimes, it works -- at least until those other
>> installations get updated without the knowlege of the distro that
>> currently "owns" the MBR's bootloader config. Then it stops working
>> until you tell that bootloader to re-do it's rummaging about
>> routine.
>
> IME distros that try that (SUSE, anyone!) generally get confused as
> to which kernel belongs to which root partition.
>
> Hence needing to boot with a live distro to edit the resulting mess
> and get the system to actually come up without crashing ...

IIRC, all of the big distros used to do that. It didn't work very
well, but at least it took a really long time.

However, I read recently that Ubuntu had disabled the os-prober by
default in 22.04.  Disabling it was always one of the first things I
did after installing a new distro.

The simple solution is to give up on multi-booting a dozen different
distros on a single disk and buy a pocketful of USB 3 thumb drives.

--
Grant