linux boot apppears twice

If you dont manage by editing your /boot/grub/menu.lst, I would recomend you to use the StartUp Manager GUI.
Have a look to some screenshots (they are self-explanatory):
http://web.telia.com/~u88005282/sum/screenshots.html
It lets you configure some grub options with an easy-to-use graphical interface.
Install:
# sudo aptitude install startupmanager

Hope it helps you.
Greetings

Wow, that looks nice. I've never seen the Startup Manager before. The blue at the top suggests it's either Kubuntu or Xubuntu but the shade of blue seems unusual for either of them.

I would find this a lot eaier from the Command-line, although i also usually prefer gui's.

From the question i am a little unclear and just want to check. Are you getting 2 Boot-menu's? or just multiple entries in the one menu? It's quite normal to have quite a lot of different entries for Ubuntu in the one menu but these usually have different numbers, such as "2.6.24-24" for the first pair and then "2.6.24-16" for the second, or something like that. Another thing that worries me is that these numbers seem very low. In 9.04 we are usually on 2.6.28... or higher, 8.04 might have lower numbers but should really have caught up through updates.

Please let us know
Regards from
Tom :)

The command-line route is surprisingly easy. Get a good command-line by going up to the top taskbar and click on

Applications - Accessories - Terminal

and into the terminal/command window/console type in

cd /boot/grub
ls
sudo cp menu.lst menu.lst.180609
ls

The "sudo" command will prompt you for your normal user password, not your SuperUser (sudo is a bit like saying 'do this next bit as though i was SuperUser') nor your Root password, just the regular one you use when you login. "ls" is a lower case "LS" and does the same as "dir" except it colour codes the LiSt of what's in the folder. "cp" is the CoPy command and usually shouldn't be done as superuser but /boot is a system folder so it's kept safer from accidents by requiring writing to it to be only allowable if your SuperUser. "menu.lst" is the file that has the boot menu stuff in it so making a copy of this file and giving the cpy todays date should help us return to this one that we know kinda works fine. Another crucial thing to do now is to make sure you have a linux Cd (the Ubuntu one is fine, i usually have a Wolvix one close by for this
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix
but the Ubuntu one is good too) easily to hand so that if anything does go wrong you can just boot up from the Cd and copy back the original menu.lst to wipe the one we are about to play with. That all sounds a lot worse than it really is, i have a natural gift for making things sound more complicated than they really are.

Ok, now type

sudo gedit menu.lst

this time sudo wont ask for a password because less than 15minutes have passed since you last gave a password for sudo so it's happy to accept that you are probably you. Gedit is a nice text-editor a bit like an advanced "notepad", linux has many different ones, nano is a good non-gui one. All the lines in menu.lst that start with # are just there for us to read, the computer ignores them. We call these 'commented out' and can help give us handy hints. Scrolling right down to the bottom you'll see chunks like

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=66daaabd-ec15-4184-9ee5-df800b17fde2 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic
quiet

and then eventually

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hdb1
title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root (hd1,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

Cut and paste your version of this last one to just after the end of the 'commented out' section and just before the first Ubuntu chunk. Then click on save. Now when you reboot you should see that the Windows one is at the top. I would scroll right back up to the top of menu.lst and change where it says "default = 0" to "default = 1" and delete the # from the beginning of that line (if there is a #) so that the machine can read it. Also notice that in the chunks the line that starts with "title" is what appears in the boot menu, so you can heavily edit those but don't bother editing the Ubuntu lines as these will eventually vanish as you get newer and newer kernels in your updates - ie when "2.6.24..." is superseded by "2.6.27..." etc

Again as you'll see this is all really easy, just a couple of clicks, a copy & paste and a tiny bit of typing but gives you better access and teaches a lot about the guts of your system which might help you with other stuff too.

Hope this helps
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

The problem with numbers like 2.6.24 is that it might indicate you are using Ubuntu 7.10 and really need to upgrade to 8.04 or 9.04. You can do this from a Cd if your internet connection isn't a reliable broadband - it's probably safer from a Cd anyway imo
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/
and this gives the advantage of having an up-to-date Cd to show off with or to use if you run into problems. You could download and make one from

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

but i like the look of the official ones and it seems to impress people that notice it laying around ;)
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Easy resolution
1.sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
2. Replace # howmany=all to # howmany=1

Dohh, i forgot that one ;) Errr, and delete the # making it

howmany=1

Simple solution!
gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
after this search for #howmany=all
make it #howmany=1.
I have tried it..it works!

Brilliant, nicely done :)))
Please click the "This solved the problem" button at the bottom of Aurevoir's post so that the "Solved Answers" database has the right answer to help people in the future.
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)