How to Add Backtrack 3 to Existing Grub

Dual-Boot Backtrack 3
Well, I have Backtrack 3 installed, and as you know, it uses Lilo, which to be honest I’m not all that keen on.

Using Grub from another distro
I reinstalled Dreamlinux 3.5 and chose “Install Grub to MBR”. So, back to Grub, but now I have to add Backtrack 3 which doesn’t have the initrd file in the /boot directory.

Adding Backtrack 3 to Menu List
No problem, just add these lines where “hda1″ is your Backtrack partition:

title Backtrack 3 Desktop
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz vga=791 root=/dev/hda1 ro autoexec=xconf;kdm
boot

title Backtrack 3 Console
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz vga=791 root=/dev/hda1 ro
boot

Now reboot and you should see those entries, and you should be able to boot into Backtrack 3 from Grub.

*note* Grub partition numbers
Remember that the Grub partition number will always be one less than the actual partition.
For example
hda1 is (hd0,0)
0 for the first harddrive, 0 as well for the first partition
hda2 would be (hd0,1)
hda3 would be (hd0,2) etc etc, always one number less.

What if you have a second harddrive?
hdb1 would be (hd1,0)
hdb2 would be (hd1,1) etc, etc, now the harddrives go up as well as the partitions.

There you go, easy.


About rich scadding
Father, Husband, Linux Geek…. In That Order

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