Daily Archives: February 20, 2010

Random links for week 7

Posted by Praveen Kumar on February 20, 2010 No comments
  • Last week, I filed my 2009 Federal and State taxes through TurboTax. I found a promotion from Fidelity that offered 25% discount on all TurboTax products. If you are a TurboTax user, you can take advantage of it. You need not be a Fidelity customer to use this promotion. This is not a recommendation or endorsement for TurboTax. Take the discount if you are an existing user or you decided to try TurboTax.
  • Last weekend, I went to Mt.Rose for skiing with Luke Hornof. This was second ski trip. The first one was Sierra at Tahoe. Mt.Rose was a smaller resort compared to Sierra. However, I liked it much better for the experience that I had. The lift lines were smaller and the people were much friendlier. The ski rental shop people were very helpful and paid good attention in getting the right equipment and settings. The ski instructor Scott was one of the most knowledgeable ski instructor and was an excellent skier! Overall, it was a very positive experience and I will go there again. I am also planning to take a bunch of private lessons from Scott.
  • During the ski trip, we stayed at Carson City. It was a small city, not so busy! The people were cool and very nice. Luke and I were hoping around bars, pool clubs and hookah lounges on a quest with a hypothetical question and it was fun. I liked this place. But, I am not sure if I will visit this one again.

Chainloading OpenSolaris from GRUB 2

Posted by Praveen Kumar on February 20, 2010 No comments

I have a triple boot system with OpenSolaris, Ubuntu 9.10 and Microsoft Windows XP. I upgraded my Ubuntu 9.10 GRUB to GRUB 2 today. GRUB2 automatically added an entry for Microsoft Windows XP. However, it didn’t detect the OpenSolaris that was installed. I had to manually configure OpenSolaris chainloading in GRUB 2. If you are in a similar situation, this will be helpful for you to configure your GRUB 2.

Find your OpenSolaris partition.

$ sudo fdisk -l
 
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00099420
 
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1       12158    97659103+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2   *       12159       24314    97643070   bf  Solaris
/dev/sda3           24317       38913   117250402+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5           24317       38297   112302351   83  Linux
/dev/sda6           38298       38913     4947988+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

In my case, it is /dev/sda2. Once you have found it, edit /etc/grub.d/40_custom and add the following entry for OpenSolaris. A key difference between GRUB and GRUB 2 is the device numbering. In GRUB, sda2 is (hd0,1). However, in GRUB 2, sda2 is (hd0,2). Keep this in mind when you are configuring your GRUB 2.

# Chainload OpenSolaris GRUB.
menuentry "Chainload OpenSolaris GRUB" {
    set root=(hd0,2)
    chainloader +1
}

Now your /etc/grub.d/40_custom should look like the following.

#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
 
# Chainload OpenSolaris GRUB.
menuentry "Chainload OpenSolaris GRUB" {
    set root=(hd0,2)
    chainloader +1
}

Then run update-grub to regenerate /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

$ sudo update-grub
Generating grub.cfg ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-19-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-19-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
Found Microsoft Windows XP Professional on /dev/sda1
done

You will not find anything about OpenSolaris in the output message. However, you can examine /boot/grub/grub.cfg to find if an entry is added for OpenSolaris.

$ tail -10 /boot/grub/grub.cfg 
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
 
# Chainload OpenSolaris GRUB.
menuentry "Chainload OpenSolaris GRUB" {
    set root=(hd0,2)
    chainloader +1
}
### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###