Booting Linux by the boot manager of Boot-US
Linux:
Linux can be installed on a primary or logical partition on any hard disk.
Usually GRUB is additionally installed in the MBR of the respective disk.
Starting Linux is done by loading GRUB first, which in turn then starts Linux.
The installation of GRUB into the MBR of the respective disk overwrites other boot managers which may reside
already in the MBR.
In order to not disturb other installations Linux should be installed on an empty disk
and other disks with other installation should be detached.
This method has the least impact on other operating systems.
Boot manager Boot-US:
The boot manager Boot-US can start Linux from a primary or logical partition on the first or a higher boot disk.
Boot-US knows two ways for starting Linux:
- by using GRUB installed in the MBR of the Linux disk
- by starting the boot sector of the Linux partition directly
The first variant is implemented by the option "boot MBR with GRUB from disk x".
The second variant requires to install a Linux boot loader, e.g. GRUB, into the boot sector of the Linux partition.
In both cases no further configuration of GRUB is required.
If Linux resides on a higher boot disk then the boot manager Boot-US
passes the correct boot disk number internally to GRUB.
No change of GRUB is necessary.
Drive and partition names:
Linux uses the following drive and partition names:
- the first SCSI or SSD disk is called /dev/sda
- the second SCSI or SSD disk is called /dev/sdb (etc.)
- the first IDE disk is called /dev/hda
- the second IDE disk is called /dev/hdb (etc.)
The partitions on a drive are named by the drive name appended by a number.
For example sda2 refers to the second primary partition on the sda drive..
Installing GRUB to the boot sector:
During the installation of Linux usally a Linux boot loader (for example GRUB) is automatically installed
into the MBR. In order to install GRUB into the boot sector of a Linux partition the command grub-install
can be used.
As already noted no special configuration of GRUB is necessary.
You only need to specify the correct installation target of GRUB.
Supposed Linux is installed to sda2. Then GRUB must be installed also to sda2
for allowing Boot-US to directly start the Linux partition.
Example:
grub-install /dev/sda2
If you erroneously specify the target sda then GRUB would be installed to the MBR of the sda drive.
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