01-14-2016, 10:49 PM
Hmmm....
I haven't embarked on austin.texas' "alternative solution" yet, though that's what I was aiming to do. Before I started, I just thought well, I'll take another sneak peek into the LL grub file to see if I can see and interpret the menu entries that are in there.
And sure enough, as I think you had correctly guessed or presumed, LL's Grub file does indeed list in its menu entries not only LL and Win7, but also Linux Mint. So when I installed LL, I guess it automatically spotted and included the Mint installation that was already there? I certainly didn't "sudo update" LL's Grub, because after I installed it I was unable to boot into LL since EasyBCD did not see or offer it...
So just to be clear: did LL see and include Mint in its grub automatically (ie without "sudo update-grub") as soon as I installed it?
Incidentally just to be clear about the installs, I have Mint and its Grub on dev/sda6, and LL with its Grub on dev/sda7, then dev/sda8 is still empty and earmarked for PCLOS, and dev/sda9 is the shared DATA partition.
I went one step further, just because I was curious.
I did not uninstall Mint's grub (as your advice suggested). Being naturally cautious, I hate removing/deleting /uninstalling in case I can't later recover or reinstate things! I just went into Win7 and removed the "Mint" entry from the EasyBCD menu, leaving just Win7 and Linux Lite as listed options (it is quite clear that removing the Mint entry from EasyBCD's menu does not delete the OS itself). Then in the EasyBCD menu I selected Linux Lite to boot into. I wanted to see if EasyBCD would know - or would now go and look for - Linux Lite's grub.
As usual, first up came the Windows bootloader screen (now showing only Win7 and LL). I selected LL. What came up? Yes, Mint's Grub screen again (still showing no LL).
What does that prove? It seems that even though I had taken Mint off the EasyBCD menu, EasyBCD still goes to the Mint Grub which sits, with Mint itself, in dev/sda6!
Not sure how interesting or useful that knowledge is. It suggests that EasyBCD doesn't, perhaps, "search" for Grubs (or once it has a grub2 identified, it doesn't then look for others!).
But this does confirm that either I have to insert LL manually into that Mint grub, as austin.texas recommends, since Mint evidently didn't see and automatically incorporate LL when I installed LL; or I have to make LL's Grub the "go-to" one for EasyBCD, which - as you have advised - means actually removing/uninstalling Mint's grub files.
So I'm back to the angle which originally surfaced in separate earlier threads about the way in which LL's grub plays with other Linux grubs. As I understand that issue, put simply, LL works well as "lead" grub and sees and boots other distros; but the grubs of other distros (like Mint) don't always see or work well with LL.
If true, that may be an argument for going the gold_finger route (making LL the lead, since it has already seen and included Mint) rather than the austin.texas route (manually inserting LL into Mint's Grub, doing sudo update and then relying on Mint's grub as the sole Grub2 and booting into LL from there).
If I do go forward with the manual-insertion of LL into Mint's boot menu (the austin.texas route) having now looked into the actual "texts" in the grub files of both distros, I will need to get absolute clarity on where to paste-in the additional menu entry. But I will put that into a separate post.
The saga continues......
I haven't embarked on austin.texas' "alternative solution" yet, though that's what I was aiming to do. Before I started, I just thought well, I'll take another sneak peek into the LL grub file to see if I can see and interpret the menu entries that are in there.
And sure enough, as I think you had correctly guessed or presumed, LL's Grub file does indeed list in its menu entries not only LL and Win7, but also Linux Mint. So when I installed LL, I guess it automatically spotted and included the Mint installation that was already there? I certainly didn't "sudo update" LL's Grub, because after I installed it I was unable to boot into LL since EasyBCD did not see or offer it...
So just to be clear: did LL see and include Mint in its grub automatically (ie without "sudo update-grub") as soon as I installed it?
Incidentally just to be clear about the installs, I have Mint and its Grub on dev/sda6, and LL with its Grub on dev/sda7, then dev/sda8 is still empty and earmarked for PCLOS, and dev/sda9 is the shared DATA partition.
I went one step further, just because I was curious.
I did not uninstall Mint's grub (as your advice suggested). Being naturally cautious, I hate removing/deleting /uninstalling in case I can't later recover or reinstate things! I just went into Win7 and removed the "Mint" entry from the EasyBCD menu, leaving just Win7 and Linux Lite as listed options (it is quite clear that removing the Mint entry from EasyBCD's menu does not delete the OS itself). Then in the EasyBCD menu I selected Linux Lite to boot into. I wanted to see if EasyBCD would know - or would now go and look for - Linux Lite's grub.
As usual, first up came the Windows bootloader screen (now showing only Win7 and LL). I selected LL. What came up? Yes, Mint's Grub screen again (still showing no LL).
What does that prove? It seems that even though I had taken Mint off the EasyBCD menu, EasyBCD still goes to the Mint Grub which sits, with Mint itself, in dev/sda6!
Not sure how interesting or useful that knowledge is. It suggests that EasyBCD doesn't, perhaps, "search" for Grubs (or once it has a grub2 identified, it doesn't then look for others!).
But this does confirm that either I have to insert LL manually into that Mint grub, as austin.texas recommends, since Mint evidently didn't see and automatically incorporate LL when I installed LL; or I have to make LL's Grub the "go-to" one for EasyBCD, which - as you have advised - means actually removing/uninstalling Mint's grub files.
So I'm back to the angle which originally surfaced in separate earlier threads about the way in which LL's grub plays with other Linux grubs. As I understand that issue, put simply, LL works well as "lead" grub and sees and boots other distros; but the grubs of other distros (like Mint) don't always see or work well with LL.
If true, that may be an argument for going the gold_finger route (making LL the lead, since it has already seen and included Mint) rather than the austin.texas route (manually inserting LL into Mint's Grub, doing sudo update and then relying on Mint's grub as the sole Grub2 and booting into LL from there).
If I do go forward with the manual-insertion of LL into Mint's boot menu (the austin.texas route) having now looked into the actual "texts" in the grub files of both distros, I will need to get absolute clarity on where to paste-in the additional menu entry. But I will put that into a separate post.
The saga continues......