Re: Idle thoughts or question re: dual booting and grub default !?

William Case wrote:

Hi;

I have a dual boot system WindowsXP on /dev/sda; Fedora on /dev/sdb.

Some days I find myself switching between the two quite often.  I can
also go weeks with no need of Windows.

I am not sure if what I propose is possible, but ...

I would like to create a script in Fedora, and a .bat in Windows that
changes the default in grub when selected.  I would have a desktop
launcher in both systems to be used for restarting.  The alogarithm
would be something like what follows:

     1. set grub default to other OS
     2. restart

Since re-booting takes a bit of time (particularly in WindowsXP), I
could simply click my 'restart in other OS' icon and walk away for a
fresh coffee or to make a phone call without having to catch the grub
selection screen.  The normal shutdown and restart would remain the
same.

Setting up a virtual machine is a solution but for much later for me.

I am looking for pointers or suggestions; tips and tricks; on how these
scripts and batch files might be written; or even if they are possible
at all.

I will take on the actual writing of them as a personal challenge.

If you don't boot Windows often, and you normally want to boot Linux the next time you boot after running Windows, you could try Booting once-only setup in Grub. This is explained in detail in the Grub Info page, so I will not go into setup details. But what it does is tell Grub to boot a specific entry the next time you boot, and as part of the entry, it sets things back to the original default.

Note - it does not look like Fedora has the grub-set-default script file talked about, but your script could write the /boot/grub/default file. I have not used this under Fedora, but I have done it under Mandriva many times.

Another option, if you have ext2 support under windows, would be that not have the menu entry reset the default boot, but have a Windows script that changes the /boot/grub/default file.

In any case, you are going to want to change:
default=0
to
default saved

Mikkel
--

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

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