Multiple linux distros && on different drives than SYSTEM && having both GRUB and GRUB2

A

adoe

New Member
Hello, I tried to search and read posts as best as I could ,although it is ~6 am at the moment and I'm not necessarily in a great shape at the moment, so I may have missed a thread that actually addressed what I'm about to post. If this is the case, I'm sorry.

I'm using EasyBCD v2.2.0.182.

My pc has BIOS firmware (not UEFI).

My two SATA hard drives have the following partitions:

Disk 0 (BIOS BOOTS FROM THIS DRIVE, PARTITION 1, WINDOWS 8, BOOTMGR)
Partition 1____Primary____Windows 8 (x64)____WINDOWS SYSTEM PARTITION
Partition 0____Extended
Partition 2____Logical____NTFS DATA PARTITION​

Disk 1
Partition 1____Primary____Pardus 2011 (x86)____GRUB legacy
Partition 2____Primary____LINUX SWAP PARTITION
Partition 3____Primary____Windows 7 (x86)____WINDOWS BOOT PARTITION
Partition 0____Extended
Partition 4____Logical____Linux Mint 17.1 Mate (x64)____GRUB2
Partition 5____Logical____OpenSUSE 13.2 (x64)____GRUB2
Partition 6____Logical____Windows 7 (x86)
Partition 7____Logical____Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS (x64)____GRUB2​


Overview of entries in the BCD store:
There are a total of 7 entries listed in the bootloader.

Default: Windows 7 - Third
Timeout: 10 seconds
EasyBCD Boot Device: D:\

Entry #1
Name: Windows 7 - Third
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

Entry #2
Name: Windows 7 - Second
BCD ID: {9b35ea8c-cfb5-11e4-be86-687f7474e604}
Drive: F:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

Entry #3
Name: Windows 8
BCD ID: {9b35ea8d-cfb5-11e4-be86-687f7474e604}
Drive: D:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

Entry #4
Name: Linux Mint 17.1 LTS x64
BCD ID: {31b82854-0faf-11e5-be8c-0019db6b1c0a}
Drive: D:\
Bootloader Path: \NST\AutoNeoGrub0.mbr

Entry #5
Name: Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS x64
BCD ID: {31b82856-0faf-11e5-be8c-0019db6b1c0a}
Drive: D:\
Bootloader Path: \NST\AutoNeoGrub1.mbr

Entry #6
Name: OpenSUSE 13.2 x64
BCD ID: {31b82857-0faf-11e5-be8c-0019db6b1c0a}
Drive: D:\
Bootloader Path: \NST\AutoNeoGrub2.mbr

Entry #7
Name: Pardus 2011
BCD ID: {31b82858-0faf-11e5-be8c-0019db6b1c0a}
Drive: D:\
Bootloader Path: \NST\nst_linux-A07362A03CE3687267122B349F183307.mbr​

QUESTION:
Regardless of which grub2 entry I select at the windows 8's boot menu, the grub2 menu that EasyBSD loads is the last linux distro (with grub2) I installed, which is OpenSUSE in my case.

I first installed three windows operating systems (windows 8 first then the other two windows 7's), then Pardus, then Ubuntu, then Mint, and finally Open Suse:
  • Bootloaders for all linux distros are installed in their respective VBRs (or partition boot records, or boot sectors, however people like to call them these days), not to the MBR of either disk.
  • Ubuntu, mint and suse are the grub2 distros.
  • When I installed ubuntu and added an entry for it to windows 8 boot menu using EasyBCD, ubuntu entry in the windows 8 boot menu fired up ubuntu grub2 menu
  • Then, when I installed mint and added an entry for it to windows 8 boot menu using EasyBCD, mint and ubuntu entries in the windows 8 menu both fired up mint grub2 menu
  • Then, when I installed suse and added an entry for it to windows 8 boot menu using EasyBCD, entries for all three grub2 distros in the windows 8 menu fired up suse grub 2 menu.
I tried removing and re-adding entries in EasyBCD, no change, regardless of the order and combination of re-adding, e.g. I remove all linux entries and add just mint (for which I'm not able to select partition since EasyBCD .mbr file is supposed to locate it automatically), and with only one linux (mint) entry in the windows 8 boot menu, still the grub2 menu of suse is fired up upon selection of the linux entry in the windows 8 boot menu. But from there, since grub2 has great probing capability itself, it lists other linux distros and actually lets me to boot into them, including pardus which uses grub legacy.

So, am I missing something? Is this the expected behaviour of EasyBCD, because it cannot distinguish between different grub2 installations and load the correct (stage 2) partition boot code (instead it loads the last installed grub2 distro)? I've seen a couple of threads regarding multiple grub2 distro's, dating back to 2011 I guess, but none of them had a conclusive answer, or I overlooked it.

Help is much appreciated, thanks.

- adoe
 
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