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

New /boot/grub/menu.lst for Linux on usb-HDD

Because I had to delete ALL of my internal HDD because of an unrepairable problem in OS X, my precious menu.lst that handled, besides 4 Linux OSes on the internal drive, a further 6 installed on my usb drive.
Today I got three of them back, updated and generally tidied up to make them usable again. The three I got were Pclos, Fedora 9 and Mepis. Few if any problems were encountered other than the fact that the first two (Pclos and Fedora insist on calling the drive on the usb HDD /dev/sdax rather than the expected /dev/sdbx.

Recovering my Mac multiboot setup

I'm still not at all clear on why my HDD in the Mac became unworkable and unfixable. It seems something very serious had happened to the OS X partition (90 GB). The AppleCare guys pointed to the directory structure as having been damaged and they pointed (although reservedly) to using both Grub and EFI as bootloaders on the same HDD as both will be stored in the very same place. This, then, means that the MBR (which is where Grub sits) is in the EFI partition. Hmmm..
But if this is true, then I'm going to have more problems as I'm unlikely to stay away from what I'm doing unless I get incontrovertible evidence that it's unworkable. But it has worked fine for a year with no problems until this one.

I got the following articles from the AppleCare guys which were supposed to help me fix the problem.

In any event, once I had completely erased the whole HDD, everything started working as it should. OS X install was a piece of cake and it's fully receovered now with all of my stuff back. It's great to not see those annoying sudo errors and have Visor start normally.

Ubuntu install went fine without problems although I don't have everything fully back yet but it's only a matter of time.
Foresight, on the other hand is problematic. Perhaps its because the version I installed was a bit old (2.0.2) and there was an awfi=ul lot of updates. Maybe I'll download the latest version (2.0.4) and try again with that tomorrow.
I had two problems:
1. Yakuake, although it installed normally, will only work as root. A lot of stuff in ~/.kde had root as owner. I changed this to my user but didn't improve matters. Sounds like a similar problem I had with Intrepid (Ubuntu) which got resolved when I installed a bunch of updates.
Funny thing is that when I type yakuake in a terminal (without sudo), it just stays open with no errors or any other comments. If I ctrl-c this and type sudo yakuake, it errors (communication error--it probably crashed) but yet, yakuake starts and is fully usable but as root.
2. The Desktop icons dissappeared and I can't get them back. Going to Places>>Home Folder opens nothing.
I'm very inclined to blame the huge amount of updates so I'll start afresh tomorrow.

Number of partitions on sata HDs limited to 15 by libATA

Well, I learnt something today.
The older Pata HDs apparently could be divided into unlimited partitions but the newer (and soon to be exclusive) Sata drives limit you to a maximum of 15 partitions.
Yes, I knew about the 15 partition stuff but didn't know that there are still some distros that support non-libATA stuff and therefore let you go higher than 15 in the number of partitions.
From what I can see, openSUSE 10.3 and Mandriva 2008-1 are in this group.
It is suggested by ardent multibooters that you should put swap partition and the / and /home for all distros that use libATA on the first 15 partitions. Then put the non-libATA OSes on the higher number slices.
I learnt a lot from this thread and, indeed, this seems a useful forum for multibooters although the few threads I read involved some heavy detailed stuff.