Dual boot fails with Mageia/Mandriva

[John Webster]

While Kubuntu 11.04 is now my main distribution, I have also been testing the beta versions of Mageia. In attempting to run Mageia as a subsidiary distribution in a multi-boot situation controlled by Ubuntu/Kubuntu, I have run into a problem that I had previously experienced while attempting to use Mandriva in a similar way - the boot process terminates in a kernel panic, apparently because Grub2 doesn't properly identify the default boot location in Mageia/Mandriva.

The problem doesn't seem to arise (for me, anyway) with other distributions still using Grub1, such as openSUSE and Fedora, and has apparently already been raised upstream. See:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=606904

This bug was marked as resolved in version 1.98 of Grub2 back in August 2010. Nevertheless, the issue still exists in version 1.99~rc1-13ubuntu, as used in Ubuntu and Kubuntu 11.04. Since this appears to be a version specific to Ubuntu. I have reported the bug here rather than re-opening the upstream bug at this stage.

I have just discovered that another bug report, complete with what appears to be a very simple patch to fix the problem, was lodged upstream in January 2010:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=566102

Clearly that patch has not yet been implemented.

[Martino (laska-bozzolo)]

Also my Ubuntu 11.04 fully upgraded can't boot Mageia 1. Kernel panic here, too.

[Zen25000 (zen25000)]

Martino wrote 2 hours ago: #1

Also my Ubuntu 11.04 fully upgraded can't boot Mageia 1. Kernel panic here, too.

Look at /boot/grub/grub.cfg in Ubuntu and compare the (hdx.y) in the linux.... line with the one on the initrd..... line.
They should be the same - if they are not, edit the initrd line to use the same (hdx,y) as the linux line.
You will need to use an editor as root. This should fix it temporarily.
To work around this issue more permanently it would be better to move the Mageia entry from grub.cfg to /etc/grub.d/40_custom so that it will not be broken again when you run update-grub.
After moving it to 40_custom you will need to run update-grub for it to appear in the menu.
Hope that helps

This bug http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=566102
in OS-prober really needs fixing in Ubuntu :(

[stblack (stblack-linux)]

I confirm this bug.
I did a Mageia 1 installation and after an Ubuntu 11.04.
Both fully updated.
Grub2, installed with Ubuntu 11.04, didn't detect correctly Mageia and the result is a Kernel Panic try to boot.
The error is in the (hdx,y).

Stblack

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This issue has sat incomplete for more than 60 days now. I'm going to close it as invalid. Please feel free re-open if this is still an issue for you. Thank you.