Menu.lst ready to offer all six Linux OSes from usb HDD

Well, this long-delayed task is finally complete and I can once again see all 10 Linux OSes in my Grub menu -- six of which are actually on my Seagate 250 GB usb drive.
In reality this wasn't really difficult but three of the externally-stored OSes referred to the usb drive as /dev/sdax rather than the expected /dev/sdbx.
The one problem I found in trying to install these six OSes was that wireless just doesn't work as cleanly in Linux as it does in OS X. In fact, the only OS that was able to see my wireless network was Sabayon.
Additionally, I had problems updating two of these; LinuxMint updated but ran into a last minute problem when it refused to commit the updates as either there was a download error or committing would break some packages.
No sure how to get around this and may have to re-install Mint.
Also, it seems that I just don't know how to do an update in Sabayon but here's an article that should help me.

Nevertheless, I now have once again a total of 10 Linux OSes that I can boot to from this simple menu. And they all boot cleanly.
So, to avoid losing this precious /boot/grub/menu.lst information, I'm going to print all the relevant parts here so it'll always be available:

splashimage (hd0,8)/boot/grub/splashimages/xyz.xpm.gz

title ********************Operating systems on Internal HDD****************************
root

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=5b844c98-97e8-4cad-b051-32ddd40f02ad ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic
quiet

title Foresight Linux 2.6.26.3-1-fl.smp.gcc4.1.x86.i686.img
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26.3-1-fl.smp.gcc4.1.x86.i686 ro vga=0x317 root=LABEL=/
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.26.3-1-fl.smp.gcc4.1.x86.i686.img

title openSUSE 11.0 2.6.25.11-0.1-pae
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25.11-0.1-pae root=/dev/sda5 resume=/dev/sda11 #splash=silent showopts vga=0x314
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.25.11-0.1-pae


title Sidux 2008-2 Erebos, kernel 2.6.25-9.slh.1-sidux-686
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25-9.slh.1-sidux-686 root=UUID=0adeb796-dd19-4af9-bad7-bcebfea68264 ro vga=791
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.25-9.slh.1-sidux-686

title ********************Operating systems on External HDD****************************
root

title PCLinuxOS 2.6.18.8.tex5
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/pclos/vmlinuz-2.6.18.8.tex5 BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=/dev/sda3 acpi=on resume=/dev/sdb1 splash=silent vga=788
initrd /boot/pclos/initrd-2.6.18.8.tex5.img

title Fedora (2.6.25-14.fc9.i686)
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/fedora/vmlinuz-2.6.25-14.fc9.i686 ro root=/dev/sda15 rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/fedora/initrd-2.6.25-14.fc9.i686.img


title MEPIS newest kernel
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/mepis/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb7 nomce quiet splash vga=791 resume=/dev/sdb1
initrd /boot/mepis/initrd.img
boot

title Linux Mint 4.0 KDE CE, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/mint/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=/dev/sdb9 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/mint/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
boot

title Mandriva desktop586 2.6.24.5-2mnb
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/mandriva/vmlinuz-2.6.24.5-desktop586-2mnb BOOT_IMAGE=desktop586_2.6.24.5-2mnb root=/dev/sda12 resume=/dev/sda1 splash=silent vga=788
initrd /boot/mandriva/initrd-2.6.24.5-desktop586-2mnb.img

title Sabayon Linux x86 3.4 Standard Edition
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/sabayon/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.22-sabayon root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sdb13 quiet init=/linuxrc splash=silent,theme:sabayon vga=791 CONSOLE=/dev/tty1 pci=nomsi
initrd /boot/sabayon/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.22-sabayon

Linux Mint upgrade

Went back to Linux Mint today.
Given yesterdays experience with pclos, I thought I better update and upgrade it before I do anything else.
The only way I could find to get it updated (after changing the main Ubuntu repos in /etc/apt/sources.list to Hardy rather than Gutsy) was to type

sudo apt upgrade

(yes, upgrade not update)
This took about an hour and apparently more than 700 packages were installed.

Linux Mint -- some problems

Well, actually, there's aonly one problem and it's a strange one meaning I don't yet have an explanation or a fix.
This is that when I try to edit one of my blogs, the new post page is missing quite a lot of stuff.
For example, no Edit Html or Compose tabs are available -- none at all.
In addition, very few buttons are available on the page; just SpellCheck and Add Image and Preview. I've posted to Blogger Group Help about this but got no replies afetr 15 hours. This usually means it's not a common problem.
Other than that everything is working very well in Mint.

Edit: 24/02/08
I went back to Linux Mint today and the button problem had gone. No sign of it and everything seemed fine.
The reason I had gone back to Mint is because I had come across what seemed to be the problem which is a change to About:Config>User Prefs>BrowserJavaScript from 2 (normal) to 1. When it's on 1, there are all of these missing buttons in the blogger page. On the other hand, Gmail starts up considerably faster.
When I checked today in Mint the BrowserJS was at 2. Presuming it had been at 1 earlier, why was it at 1 and why did it change back?
No answers to this.

Linux Mint 4.0 KDE Daryna

OK, today I had intended to try to see if I could encourage Mandriva 2008 to boot from the Seagate ext drive to my MacBook with the only thing I could think of trying was to increase the "sleep" function in mkinitrd from the default 8 to 20 seconds.
Honestly, I'm not at all confident this is going to do the trick. Other than that it might just be that some usb drivers are missing from the kernel. Might look at this soon.

I also tried to see if the dell 9200 would allow me to install WinXP (modified for usb support) to an external drive. However, once again I get the same BSoD I got on the E520.
The Stop: error (0x000007b) seems to be attributable to a number of things but the most likely here is that the usb drivers are missing and the installer sees a HDD it cannot install to.
However, I had though that the ngine hack had got over this but apparently not.The next thing to try might be to try to get the drivers for the Seagate ext drive and pt them on floppy and use F6 during the install to install these.

Anyway, I decided to try Linux Mint -- new version 4.0 Daryna (still in Beta) with KDE.
This is a 1 GB download which I put on DVD. Thereafter, absolutely everything went extremely well.
Installation was very quick (~10 mins) and getting it to boot from the Seagate was totally straightforward -- worked first time.

Compiz-fusion is already installed but its default settings are such that wobbly windows and cube rotation are disabled by default. So you have to go into ccsm to make changes before you see anything.
Also, the fusion-icon is not included but you can get that very easily from here

Madwifi I installed from the Ubuntu MacBook wiki and again this worked first time.

Then I got AWN installed very easily from here.

All-in-all a very pleasant first-time experience with Linux Mint.