[SOLVED] Dual-boot or multi-boot of Linux Lite (and others) with Windows 7

[br1anstorm]

We seem to have made progress, after a fashion.  I pressed on with trying to sort this before seeing the latest forum posts above......

I deleted the cfg.new file which we believed was not in use.

Then I went into the 40_custom file as root and edited it so that it only had the one entry for Linux Lite (as best I recall, I kept the first entry of the three or more that were there), and saved that.  To be honest, I still don't know how that 40_custom file had extra entries for LL.  It's quite possible that in fact I copied too big a chunk of the text from the LL grub menu entry in my earlier attempt, so I'll take the blame for that!

Then in the Mint terminal I did sudo update-grub. It appeared to work, did its stuff, and said "done" with no warning messages.

So I then rebooted.  In the (Mint) grub screen I now have - in total - 9 entries.  They are (I have numbered them - the screen list doesn't include those numbers):

1. Linux Mint 17.3 Xfce 64-bit
   
2. Advanced options for Linux Mint 17.3
   
3. Memory test
   
4. Memory test  (...... serial console)
   
5. Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda1)
   
6. Windows Recovery Environment (loader) (on /dev/sda4)
   
7. Linux Lite 2.6 (14.04) (on /dev/sda7)
   
8. Advanced options for Linux Lite 2.6 (14.04) (on ?dev/sda7)
   
9. Description:  Linux Lite 2.6 GNU/Linux
   

I have just tried (most of them) out.  The first boots as normal into Mint, so that's fine.  I haven't tried the Advanced or the two memory tests (Nos 2, 3 and 4) as I have no idea what they are or what they do.

Option 5, Windows 7 takes me back to the Windows bootloader and into Win7.  Fine.  Again, I have not tried the Windows Recovery option (No 6) .

The Linux Lite ones are where it gets interesting.  Clicking on Linux Lite 2.6 (option 7) brings up a black screen saying something like, "error:  filename expected.  Press any key to continue".  Striking a key brings back the Grub screen with the nine options listed.

I didn't try the next one, Advanced options for Lite, but my guess is that it would do the same.

Then clicking the last entry, "Description:  Linux Lite 2.6 GNU/Linux" boots into ....yes ...... Linux Lite!  Result! 

No initial Lite grub splash screen with feather design behind it, it goes straight into the login page with avatar/name in the centre and Sleep/Restart/Shutdown buttons.

This tallies with gold_finger's scenario in the latest post above. I conclude from this that my manual edit of the 40_custom file caused that last entry to be added to the Grub menu;  and that the sudo update-grub triggered the 30_os-prober to see and automatically add the other two Linux Lite entries (at No7 and No8), both of which don't in fact work.  I take it that they don't work, and bring up that error message, because of the tweaking which was done to the LL Grub and of which we are all now more aware (gold_finger noted this in an earlier post above)

So, progress made in that I can now boot into either of the two Linux OSs.  It's a minor pain and a bit untidy that I have two superfluous and non-functional options (No7 and No8) listing LL in the Mint grub screen menu.  I wondered if in theory one could edit them out, by going into Mint's boot/grub/grub.cfg and amending or deleting those menu entries.  But then (as I speculated in my earlier post) when you do sudo grub-update, the 30_os-prober goes and finds them again and adds them in.  Catch 22!

I can now see that temporarily setting aside or saving 30_os-prober would avoid the creation of those two entries. By going ahead as-is, I have pre-empted that and ended up with a couple of non-working LL entries in my Mint grub boot menu.  It's a bit untidy;  but at least I know that it's the last one that works for booting into Lite. 

I agree that it makes sense to keep 30_os-prober available, for the reasons mentioned.  I don't really know what I might want to try further down the track:  I'm still a newbie discovering and learning how this whole Linux world works.

So we're probably as close as can be expected to marking this one "Solved".  Now that I can get into Linux Lite, I have still to do the symlinking of its Doc/Pics/Music etc folders into the Data partition.  But if I struggle to remember how, the guidance is still there earlier in these threads.

One more challenge (or experiment) awaits:  I want to try installing PCLinuxOS (which uses Grub Legacy) so that it too can be booted using EasyBCD.  But that's for another day, and perhaps another thread.  Meanwhile, renewed thanks to gold_finger and (indirectly - I'll be posting in the Mint forum too) to austin.texas.  I hope this has been as interesting to you, and other readers, as it has been educational for me.....