Other OSes added to GRUB menu even when GRUB installed to partition (not MBR)

[Tim Hull]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

In Ubuntu Feisty and Gutsy, if one chooses "Advanced" options at the end of the install and specifies a partition to install GRUB in (instead of the MBR), GRUB still adds choices for all of the other OSes on the system. This makes little sense, as the primary reason for installing GRUB to a partition (instead of the MBR) is because one is using another bootloader (such as rEFIt in the case of my MacBook).

As I am prompted to pick between all of these options on every boot, this can be quite annoying when I just want to install/use pre-release versions of Ubuntu in a separate partition. Please change this for Gutsy such that other OSes do NOT get added to the boot menu when GRUB is installed to a partition.

[TerryG (tgalati4)]

Triaged to Confirmed. I think that the user should be given the option, since there are cases where you still want all of the other OS's to show up. I have a machine with 4 distros on it and I want them to show up when I replace one of the distros with a new one.

[Adrian R Goalby (argoalby)]

Agree strongly with TerryG above.

When installing GRUB to a partition some people NEED all the OS's available. The change should be to ask the user whether they want this grub to include all other OS's in its menu. Suggest default to "all the OS's", because ignoring unwanted entries in a menu is a minor irritation compared to not having a required entry present.

I use GRUB in partition to leave it possible to very simply dropback to another OS, by just changing the boot/active partition flag in the MBR.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

If you don't want the other OSes detected and added to the menu, do sudo chmod a-x /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober and sudo update-grub.