Hi

I have a new system with two hard drives one with windows xp and one with Suse 10.1_64. I decided to try Fedora 5_64. Installed but once I rebooted i got the message
Grub 1.5

error 17

and that was that I could go no further. This is strange because Suse 10.1 works perfectly well with grub.
I have searched the forums for answers to this question and seen that it is quite common, but to be honest the answers have left me mystified as to what I should do. I like linux but have not technical expertise and all the answers appear to demand this.
I was wondering, if Suse load with grub, is there some why I can find out what Fedora does different when it is installed. I installed using the command to erase the whole disk. Some of the threads talk about editing the bootloader files etc, but this just produces fear in me.
At present I am using Suse, but it will not run my printer correctly it reduces the size of what is to be printed and then files at least one third of the printed page with solid black.
Any help would be useful

Can you please post the output of

# fdisk -l

and

# cat /etc/grub.conf

otto, are you saying you can still boot into suse???
If so I assume you're trying to boot fc5 by changing the boot order in bios.
So where did you tell grub to install itself??

If suse is booting ok, it's no problem to modify it's grub entry to include fc5 in it's boot loader.
fc5 works fine with grub, as long as grub is set up correctly.
That's what billymaydays questions are aimed at.
Not sure about suse, but to use fdisk with fc5 I need to either add the "-" sign after "su" when I change to root, ie su - ,or use the command # /sbin/fdisk -l

HI decrepit and billymayday

I must apologise for the confusion I have caused. When I installed Fedora I erased the whole hard drive. Thus, when I got the grub error 17 I reinstalled Suse and erased the whole harddrive again. Thus, at present I only have Suse on my linux hard drive. I hope that helps clarify things.
If Suse is already using grub would it be easier to try and load Fedora onto the same hard drive as Suse i.e., to have fedora and suse on the same harddrive, or would this futher mess things up.
It seems odd that I can use Suse using grub but not Fedora, Suse must place the bootloader somewhere different to Fedora. On the older versions of Suse you had to choice to place it in the MBR, but with 10.1 it did not ask this question. Would it help to give you a copy of the present bootloader file?
Here is the f -disk -1
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks IdSystem
/dev/sda1 * 1 9728 78140128+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 262 2104483+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb2 263 2873 20972857+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 2874 9729 55070820 83 Linux

and here is the cat /etc/grub.conf

setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 (hd0) (hd1,1)
setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 (hd1,1) (hd1,1)
quit

Is this what you need?

Thanks for the help, it is great to receive such prompt replies

Otto

Well you've certainly got stacks of room for both operating systems, and they'll be quite happy to share it.
FC5 should have worked OK, not sure why it didn't.
So still not quite sure how you're booting, have you got grub on the mbr od sda and booting both windows and suse with that?? or have you got suse's grub on sdb mbr and swapping boot sequence in bios?

What you can do is reinstall FC5 but this time don't use all the disk. FC5 has a great partioning tool with the installation setup, just opt for manual partitoning
What I do is have a fat32 partion for common data, (all operating system can read & write to it).
A linux swap partion, (about twice the size of your ram) both Fc5 and suse can use this.
FC5 like a seperate boot partition about 100Mb, then depending what sort of installation any thing from 5 to 20 Gb for /

If you install grub to mbr sda you should then be able to boot windows and FC5, but if it fails again you can then install suse on the rest of the hardrive, (unless you want to leave space for trying something else, there's plenty of room)
Suse will overwrite FC5's mbr entry, and should boot windows & suse, you'll have to edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file.
To do that just check what's in FC5's /boot/grub/grub.conf file and paste it into suse's menu.lst

decrepit

Thanks for the reply and help.
How do I find out the necessary information about how my system is presently booting?
Thansk for the advice on how to reinstall, very useful and I will give it a try. If Suse is already present on the drive does that make a difference to the installing i.e., the process of partitioning etc?

That answers my question, it's not how the computer's booting, it's how you're booting the computer, I needed to know.
That tells me that you aren't altering the bios boot sequence to change operating systems. You are selecting the OS from the grub menu.

Yes, unless you left room on the HD the suse partition needs to be shrunk!
I've never done this, so I'm no authority.
I'm fairly certain that the FC5 installer doesn't give you this option, but I could be wrong.
If you've got a live linux CD like mepis or knopix with qtparted on it, that has a partition resizing facility. Unfortunately the suse DVD doesn't have the "gui" version, but does have the console version called parted.

I don't think you can resize a partition that you are currently in, so you can't do it from your suse HD installation, it has to be from the DVD run live.
But you can do "info parted" there's lots of information there, have a read and see if you're confident enough to give it a go. Just make sure that you don't alter your windows drive!!!!!!

Thanks for the reply. I think there is something in the Suse yeast that allows one to shrink the partitions. I will have a look

OK let us know how you get on.
If you manage it OK, when you install FC5 elect not to install grub on the mbr.
Then it's a matter of adding FC5 to the suse /boot/grub/menu.lst

How do I add FC5 to /boot/grub/menu.lst? Stupid question I know but one I do not know the answer to.

So did you manage to shrink suse ok, or did you have to reinstall?

the easiest way is to mount your fedora boot partion then copy it's /grub/grub.conf entry into suse's menu.lst as an extra "title"
the bit you paste over should look something like this, (my grub.conf entry for FC4)
title Fedora Core 4
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2142_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.17-1.2142_FC4.img

The title line doesn't need the full kernel number, you can change the bit after title on that line to anything you like. As long as you leave the next 3 lines as they were.

Fedora's boot partion is usually only about 100Mb, so if you do another fdisk-l it should be easy enough to figure out which one it is. I made the mistake first time I tried mounting the fedora / partion then trying to read /boot/grub/grub.conf. Doesn't work, /boot is empty, because fedora makes it a seperate partion, when fedora is running the boot partion is mounted at /boot.

Mike

Hi Mike

I reinstalled Fedora, reducing the install to about 20g, putting the bootloader onto the windows drive and forming a boot partition on the linux drive. Everthing installed and I am now writing to you via Fedora, there is one small problem, the bootloader loads straight into Fedora. There is no list of OS's to choice from i.e., I cannot load Windows! I presume there is a fairly simply answer? I hope.
Here is the read out from cat /etc/grub.conf if it is any use to you

Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd1,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sdb3
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img
title Other
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

I tried # fdisk -l but got: command not found

I am a little concerned that by accident I am have done something nasty to my windows hard drive (I cannot find it under root file) is there something I can do to check it is still there?

Cheers

Otto K

Congratulations!
Don't worry, looks like you're fine.
A lot of people are having trouble with the FC5 default booting option. when you boot up, as soon as bios does it's thing, you should get a screen that says something like, booting FC5 in 5 seconds, press any key to enter menu.
Trouble is 5 seconds isn't long enough to read it!!!!! And if you take you're eyes off the screen you've missed it. What most people who are multibooting are doing, is commenting out the "hiddenmenu" bit and increasing the "timeout", like this.
from your grub.conf,
------
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
----------
The menu should now come up with your 2 titles
Fedora Core (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5)
&
Other

"Other" of course is windows, you can change that to read windows, or something else more specific.

There's a few commands, fdisk amongst them, that you need both root permission and roots path to use.
doing su only gives you root permissions, to get roots path you need to add a "-" sign like this
"su -"
The other way is you forgot the "-" is to add /sbin/ to the command, like this /sbin/fdisk -l

Hi Mike

Excellent, I cannot thank you enough for your help. It is such a thrill to have both Fedora and Windows running.
I am new to Fedora but I think it is really rather good. Compared to Suse it loads much quicker and appears to be generally a lot faster.
Could I ask you a couple other questions?
1. With Fedora is it possible to access my windows drive? With Suse and Mandriva you can access date on the windows drive.
2 the firewall is not allowing me to send out mail, how do I adjust it to allow me to do so? I also use Skype how do I adjust the firewall to allow me to use it?

Once again, thank you for all your help

Great Otto,
Glad to be of help,
I don't hink RH, as yet don't supports ntfs, (certainly my core4 doesn't) but you can download "something" not sure of precise terminology, think it may be a kernel module. The question's been answered a few times on the forum, a search of how to mount ntfs should find it. That will enable you to read ntfs ok, but a lot of people say it's still unsafe to write to it. That's why most people dual booting have a common vfat partition for shared data.

>>>edit, just been browsing the linux newsgroup, and came across this answer to your question.
http://www.linux-ntfs.org/content/view/128/64/
<<<<<<<<

Create a directory somewhere, usually it's in /mnt call it say, XP, then as root you can mount it by

mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 /mnt/XP
Or if you want it to happen at boot time, with user permissions add a line like this to the /ect/fstab file
/dev/sda1 /mnt/XP ntfs defaults,users.rw 0 0

Think that should work, core5 has changed the way it mounts stuff, and I'm not too sure about it.

Surprised about your firewall, I haven't had any trouble with it. May be something to do with SE Linux, I have mine turned to notify only. For Skype I think there's one port you need to open but not sure wich one or how to do it. Think you need to make another post, sorry
Good luck, have fun, Mike.