Ubuntu 11.10 64 bit and 32 bit on two drives

Question

I recently acquired a 64 bit machine which works well (AMD 64 3800+). I had an old Dell P4 machine which I had configured to dual-boot 11.10 32-bit and Win XP SP3.

I wish to install the disk from my old machine into the 64 bit machine and keep everything as is on it to run along with the 64 bit 11.10 installation.

Can I use the install disk to set up grub to multi-boot the other disk (e.g. Win XP and 11.10 32 bit in addition to 11.10 64 bit)? Or, will I have to manually set this configuration up with the 64 bit loader?

Answer 1

I believe update-grub right from your current install should do all this for you.

/etc/grub/30_os-prober seems to be what handles all the nitty gritty details, but you don't really have to care about that.

My suggestion? Plug in the other HD, try update-grub and see what happens. It ought to all just work, but if not, come back and edit the question :)