Default contents for menu.lst file

SUSE Product Topics SLES Install-Boot
1

Is there a default config for /boot/grub/menu.lst ? (gub legacy). Say, if we install a system using PXE with minimal detail regarding grub in the autoyast file:

grub

How does the system know what all to include in the menu.lst file and how does it configure grub for boot up?

2

On 14/04/2015 12:44, vijish wrote:
[color=blue]

Is there a default config for /boot/grub/menu.lst ? (gub legacy). Say,
if we install a system using PXE with minimal detail regarding grub in
the autoyast file:

grub

How does the system know what all to include in the menu.lst file and
how does it configure grub for boot up?[/color]

SLES11 and earlier includes GRUB whereas SLES12 has GRUB 2 - which
version of SLES are you running? Please post the output from “cat
/etc/*release”.

HTH.

Simon
SUSE Knowledge Partner

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3

It is SLES 11 and we have grub legacy (.97).

cat /etc/SuSE-release

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (x86_64)
VERSION = 11
PATCHLEVEL = 3

4

Here’s an example from a SLES 11 SP3 x86_64 system, which I believe is a
Xen guest so mind the kernel names there:

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Thu May  1 06:54:18 MDT 2014
default 0
timeout 8
##YaST - generic_mbr
gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/message
##YaST - activate

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Xen -- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 - 3.0.76-0.11
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.76-0.11-xen root=/dev/xvda2 resume=/dev/xvda1
splash=silent crashkernel=256M-:128M showopts
initrd /boot/initrd-3.0.76-0.11-xen

To answer your question about how things get in there, the system
auto-populates entries, and while I’m not sure of all the specifics I know
that when a kernel update happens that something about that updates the
Grub configuration for the updated file(s).

–
Good luck.

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5

On 15/04/2015 05:58, ab wrote:
[color=blue]

To answer your question about how things get in there, the system
auto-populates entries, and while I’m not sure of all the specifics I know
that when a kernel update happens that something about that updates the
Grub configuration for the updated file(s).[/color]

Every time a new kernel is installed /etc/sysconfig/bootloader is used
to build /boot/grub/menu.lst. See
https://www.suse.com/documentation/sles11/book_sle_admin/data/sec_grub_basic.html
for more information on GRUB in SLES11.

HTH.

Simon
SUSE Knowledge Partner

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please show your appreciation and click on the star below. Thanks.

6

Thanks a lot Simon. This file seems to be the template used for the menu.lst.

In our blade running on SLES 11. I see that the first disk used for boot is (hd1,4) .

title SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 - 3.0.101-0.21
root (hd1,4)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/md1 console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 splash=silent crashkernel= showopts numa=off noht
initrd /initrd

The partition 4 is taken because we have /boot mounted on /dev/sda5 and /dev/sdb5. But, Is there some reason as to why it would take hd1 instead of hd0 for the disk.

Don’t know if this is relevant, but, Our blade has the following disk layout. It uses mirroring raid setup. All are on extended partitions:

/dev/md0 (sda5 sdb5 ) /boot
/dev/md1 (sda6 sdb7) / partition
/dev/md3 (sda7 sdb7) swap
/dev/md2 (sda8 sdb8) /var