Editing Grub Menu-normal.list

From Freespire

Home-->Documentation-->Hints & Tips-->Editing Ones Menu-normal.lst

Editing Ones Menu-normal.lst

Right, blatant plagiarism of Make WinXP Default in Grub

First thing you have to do is, Create a Root Login Account.

Now that you have that done, as root (or using sudo), open the File Manager (konqueror) and browse to /boot/grub .

Now, with your favorite text editor, open up the menu-normal.lst file in /boot/grub . This is a typical menu-normal.lst file for WinXP on hda1 and Freespire on hda5 (extended partition).

Warning: do not use any of the above text trying to sort out your own install, it has been modified for this example.

Edit away. Save. That's it, you're done.

An example might be to add xdriver=vesa to ones kernel option. Find the first Freespire entry.

# hda5, boot entry
title Freespire Ver. 1.1.73
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-2-486  root=/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part1 rootdev=0x0341 ramdisk=14137 quiet video=vesafb splash quiet video=vesafb xdriver=vesa
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.18-2-486

Add xdriver=vesa & a space to the line that stars with kernel,

This is correct in theory, however in my case, I also had to edit the file: menu-hdb=hd1.lst I installed Freespire on a seperate slave drive on the same IDE channel in my system. If you create the ROOT account as shown above, you can access all these files through the File Manager (Konqueror) and then just double click each file and it will open in the Kwrite text editor. In ALL files that have the above text, you will need to change the default to whatever your Windows XP is in the list using zero as your first digit. I also deleted the Back-Up files. (Your Choice) I did not want Jiffyboot to have any files to copy old defaults from. Now with these files edited and saved, you need to open a Konsole and run this command to prevent Jiffyboot from overwriting the changes. Just type in: chmod a-x /sbin/jiffy* Then hit <Enter>

Note: The above example shows the files in Tree Mode View. My Freespire installed with the files in Icon View by default. To change this setting select View>View Mode>Tree View from the Konqueror window. I personally did not have any success trying to make these changes as a SUDO user. I created a ROOT account and got this business taken care of and then just disabled the ROOT until I need it again. I set my timeout for 4 and Windows boots right away unless you are quick to hit the up arrow key and select Freespire.

Links:
GRUB Page