Re: change default os

[pete tridish]

thanks so much Simon, i'll give it a try!


On WednesdayMar 13, 2013, at 10:52 AM, "Simon Hobson"  <address@hidden> wrote:

> pete tridish wrote:
>> - i am helping a farmworkers group to set up a radio studio, and one of the 
>> computers was set up with grub, and defaults to linux on reboot.   
>> unfortunately, i need it to default to windows--- the linux program we were 
>> going to use for the automation was not ready yet, so we switched to 
>> windows.  I'd rather not wipe out the linux now, since we may switch over 
>> when the linux software is ready. 
>> 
>> but the way it stands, any time the power goes out, it boots back in to 
>> linux and the guys here get totally lost. the computer stuff needs to work 
>> as simply as possible, without much human intervention, because the language 
>> barrier is a big issue in keeping the station running. 
>> 
>> how can i change it so that the default OS is windows?   it is grub loader 
>> version 1.99
> 
> Some of this is Distro dependent, I can only speak for Debian.
> 
> If you edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg and change where it says 'set default="0"' to 
> the index of teh OS you want to boot, that will do it **BUT** the change will 
> be wiped out next time Gurb updates it's config.
> 
> To make the change permanent, make the same change in /etc/default/grub and 
> then run "update-grub" to update /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
> 
> Both these will allow you to change the default OS to boot, but it's done by 
> index into the list. If the list changes (such as installing an updated 
> kernel) then your index will be wrong and you'll boot something else.
> 
> An alternative way is to re-order the components in /etc/grub. On my Debian 
> system, Windows (and others) are detected by30_os-prober - if you change the 
> numbering so this comes before nn_linux, then the Windows OS will come before 
> Linux in the list, meaning Windows will boot by default. You'll need to take 
> care to deal with this change any time Grub gets updated and the installer 
> wants to put new config files in.