Dual Boot Problem: FC4 and XP Pro; GRUB not appearing
 

Hello there! I need a little help with getting FC4 to play nice with Windows XP Professional SP2. I am intending to migrate to Linux and am currently evaluating various distributions.

Hardware

AMD Athlon MP 2800+ (Barton core, 512KB L2, 2,133MHz) x2
MSI K7D Master MS-6501 Rev. 1, ver 1.91
512MB Kingston ValueRAM DDR266 Registered ECC
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB HDD (Primary IDE Master)
Sony DRU-720A DVD+-RW (Primary IDE Slave)
Lian Li RH-322 IDE Rack (empty, Secondary IDE Master)
Sony DDU-1622 16x DVD-ROM (Secondary IDE Slave)

Hard Drive Geometry

25GB Primary partition (Windows system, NTFS)
49.52GB Extended partition
40GB Logical Drive (Windows home, NTFS)
9+GB Free space

Problem

I am trying to install FC4 on the same HDD as Windows XP (the WD800JB). I downloaded the DVD from a mirror site and burned it; a media check showed it to be fine. I placed it into the DDU-1622 and rebooted my machine, passing the argument "linux xfs" at the boot: prompt.

I set SELinux to "Warn" and, chose to manually partition my HDD, creating a 4GB / partition (XFS), a 1GB swap partition (Linux swap), and the remaining 4+GB as /home (XFS). This setup has worked for me in the past, when I evaluated SUSE 9.2 Professional. I installed GRUB on /dev/hda, MBR. The install completed successfully; I removed the DVD and rebooted.

Imagine my surprise when GRUB didn't show up! This had happened before with SUSE on a different machine, but SUSE had the option to fix the problem automatically. I tried to repair the install with Anaconda, and was met with an unhandled exception that forced me to reboot. I deleted the Linux partitions, applied "fixmbr", and started again, choosing to add a 102MB /boot partition (XFS) and place GRUB there. The installation hung while installing the bootloader, and here I am typing this from XP.

I must say that this is a serious letdown as far as the install experience is concerned; SUSE and Mandrake 10.1 have worked like a charm, and so did RH9, for that matter (the latter two are too old, and the former is somewhat unintuitive). I hope someone can help because FC4 looks quite promising. :scratch:

For something like /boot, why use XFS? Have you considered just using ext2 for your /boot? That may improve matters. Also, your machine is set to boot from the hard drive known as hda, and no other, correct? (In BIOS)

It's a matter of preference. I'm a die-hard XFS fan, having seen much improved performance with it throughout my Linux history. I'm not narrow-minded, though, and am willing to try stuff that might fix my problems. *laughs*

I would prefer to avoid putting in a /boot partition, if I could. The other distros allowed me to keep things nice and tidy (I'm the one and only user of this machine, and really only need /, swap, and /home and (maybe /usr if I feel like it).

Yes, my current BIOS settings are Floppy, CD-ROM, HDD0. Also, the option to try other devices is disabled and I have only one HDD in this machine.

What's odd is that it never shows grub at all. Have you tried manually forcing a grub-install?

I'd looked around the 'net, and it appears GRUB is a troublesome thing on FC4. I haven't tried forcing a GRUB install manually; by this do you mean using Rescue Mode to do so?

I've seen cases of Fedora Core (be it FC4, FC3, CentOS, etc...) not writing the MBR for some reason or another.

Boot with your rescue disk (knoppix, whatever) and mount the root directory, then cd into the root partition and chroot it to that directory.

# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1
# cd /mnt/hda1
# chroot /mnt/hda1

Then manually run grub like this:

# grub
grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit
#

Note: All of the above is assuming that you don't have a separate /boot, since creating one failed for you. If you do have a separate /boot, then you'll have to mount it in relationship to root (prior to chroot) and adjust the root values for grub accordingly...

Then reboot, it should now work...

/Les

I have a problem with dual booting FC3 with windows xp home.
hda1 = recovery partition
hda2 = windows xp
hda3 = /boot
hda 4 + 5 = FC3

grub.conf:
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# 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 (hd0,2)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,2)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
title Windows
root (hd0,1)

when i asked on the fedora help channel on freenode they said hda(0,1) should point to hda2 but when I try to boot windows with that configuration the screen just goes black.
also does anyone know if it possbile to daul boot fedora and debian?

Change your grub windows configuration like so:

# Boot Windows
title Windows Xpee
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
makeactive


And it should work...


If you are still having problems, take a look at the Grub Mini Howto:

- http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/...with-GRUB.html

/Les

Also about dual booting Fedora and Debian; yes you can do it. Just make separate /boot, /root, <swap>, /home, etc... partitions on the drive to keep things separate. You may want to create a shared /data partiton, that you can mount with either distro when they are booted.

Note: Sharing /boot is ok, as long as you take the time to back up the menu.lst (ie: grub.conf) file prior to installing the other distro. Otherwise it'll get clobbered. Then when done installing the new distro, you can merge the two menu.lst files into one...

HTH,
/Les

recovering grub using knoppix after win32(xp) installation
 

i arrived here trying to "rescue" my grub using knoppix

the story is:
i have a laptop (well not mine, at job) and my boss said me "fixit"
I installed FC4 and all works pretty, then my boss said "install win xp"
I installed winxp (the winxp story doesn't matter) and
I lost my pretty GRUB screen at the boot time and I got angry because the lap goes directly to winbugs

how do I fix it?
(short version)
I booted using knopix version 4 http://www.knoppix.org/
well my partition schema is the next :
/dev/hda1 winbugs bootable NTFS (and the winbugs overwrote the MBR)
/dev/hda2 my ext3 boot partition with the grub data for my lap (generated under FC4 installation)
/dev/hda3 my swap partition
/dev/hda4 my FC4 / partition (yes the "/")

well adter testing and testing and testing (chroot didn't work) theese are the steps
1. boot using knoppix (i used version 4 i think its better)
2. get a terminal ( > knoppix user; # root user; grub> grub shell)
> su -
# mount /mnt/hda2
(the fstab file in knoppix has detected de device properly -- usually --)
(alternative is click on the disk icon named hda2 on ur desktop)
# rm -rvf /boot/grub
(usually `grub' directory doesn't exist)
# cp -Rv /mnt/hda2/grub /boot/
(to get into knoppix env. the correct info)
$ umount /mnt/hda2
(it MUST be not mounted)
# grub
grub> root (hd0,1)
(u can use tabs to check if grub detects the partitions)
(1 = hda2, like 0 = hda1 ok?)
grub> setup (hd0)
(this step tryes to mount the hd0,1 partition first at all and uses it as "/")
(then it finds /grub/stage1 ... etc)
grub> quit
3. optional
# mount /mnt/hda2
# vim /mnt/hda2/grub/grub.conf
(edit is as u like and quit using :wq or ZZ)
4. exit terminal or close the window
# exit
> exit
5. then reboot, (using the correct clicks or commands) remove all media and enjoy it

GNU/fru