Hi,

I'm trying to install Linux for a whole week now and still no success. I keep having problems @ booting.


I have a SATA with Windows XP on it:
c: 20 gb
d: 30 gb
e: 30 gb

1 CDrom and 1 DVD at Secundary Master and Slave.


I added a IDE HD (10 gb) to install linux on it. When I placed it on Primary Master, I couln't start Windows anymore (he went looking for hall.dll on my small disk). Changing the boot sequence in my bios did not solve this problem, so I placed the IDE HD at Primary Slave, and then it was ok.

Next thing I did was installing Redhat 8 (I still had this one on CD, so...) , but this version cannot handle SATA at intallation yet, so I downloaded the latest Redhat (Fedora). This one had problems with my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, resulting at first in crashing during installation. In a text-like-installation he didn't crash, but at first boot-up of linux he crashed again (I think cause of Windows X). So I went looking for solutions. I followed some instructions, but I didn't get it fixed this way so I gave up on Fedora (wtf my Video Card isn't supported I woundered).

With Redhat 9.0 I had more luck. He didn't recognized my Radeon, but made it a Generic Vesa card, so no crashes at first boot up and leaving me the possibility of solving this problem afterwards in Graphical envirenment . Now my real problem shows up. I choose to install Grub during the installation. It recognized an MS-DOS thing, so I supposed it to be my SATA with Windows XP on it. The first time a rebooted it I decided to check Linux, this was ok. The second time I tryed to start-up windows, and this was NOT OK. It gave just some text and then nothing:

title WinXP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

The only way of entering my Win XP was by changing bios settings from HDO to SCSI as primary boot device. As you will agree this is a crapy solution, so I went looking for some other ways. I reinstalled Lunix with Lilo. This turned out worse. Lilo crashes at start up. You see the 'Li' from Lilo and then a bunch of '99 99 99'....

I found something about booting you linux from the standard windows bootloader (boot.ini):

# dd if=/dev/hda3 bs=512 count=1 of bootsect.lnx
>> copy this file in c:\ on my NTFS SATA, and then edit boot.ini adding a Lunix line:
C:\bootsect.lnx=" Linux Redhat 9"

Well, this method doesn't work at all I think. Selecting Linux Redhat 9 in the menu results in cannot find "hall.dll" or just nothing happened (I forget which of these two... so many errors on such a short time results in error-confusion, LOL). I have to be honoust, but this method mentions something about:

"1. Intall or WinXP then Linux as usual but not installing lilo on MBR of master hd instead installing on the Ist sector of the linux root partition (you can find this option during installation of various linux distro) and making a startup disk (its also asked during intallation process) for linux to start for first time."

Since I found contradictionary info on this I did not install it on the 1st sector, but on the MBR (so perhaps this is what I did wrong, since the 512 bytes will be different now... will they?).

So after trying several "solutions", my problem still isn't solved. I was thinking that perhaps copying my Linux Boot-Disk (made @ installation) in eg c:\linux , and then adding somthing like this in the boot.ini, would work:

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows XP" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\linux="Linux Redhat 9"

This seems crap to me, but I'm out of bullets as it comes to descent thinking and solving.

What I do now, when I wait for better days, is placing "Floppy", "SCSI" and "CDROM" in this boot order in my BIOS. So whenever I need to be in Linux, I can work with my Floppy (which is so damn slow). When no floppy present, it goes to the MBR of SCSI and start up my cleaned up boot.ini and Windows XP by it.

I also tryed to use some third party bootloader I found on the internet. But the problem was it placed itself (I couldn't change this myself) on the MBR of HDO (my IDE HD on Primary Slave if you still can follow), and by doing that, messing up my Linux boot sector, so I had to reïnstall it (booting with the boot-disk wasn't enough, cause afterwards Linux gave some errors in the init). Perhaps a solution to my problem is to find a GOOD (what Grub and Lilo seem NOT to be) bootloader, with a descent setup, so I can choose to install it on MBR of SATA0. By doing that my linux Boot Sector is not touched, and I can access from that Third Party Bootloader, in the hope windows will work also from there.

I'm curious for some solutions from all you,

Bart

XP don't recognize linux partition. but if you do want to try XP as primary than change the setting:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\linux="Linux Redhat 9"

because it's basicaly reading the same SATA again. change the disk(0) to disk(1) maybe. i don't know the numbering.

grub however, can handle any type of partitions. but this:

title WinXP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

is basicaly, again, read the IDE again. so you want to change rootnoverify (hd0,0) to (hd1,0). the option is available in grub boot screen.

the surest way to config grub is to install redhat 9.0 again but this time change to 'upgrade'. setup grub by adding the XP SATA dev (which should be /dev/hdb0 if placed as secondary) into the boot list.

about your ATI Radeon. try find the linux driver for it, perhaps ATI Radeon website has this.

i have install redhat 9, win2k, win98se all in one IDE HD. it works fine except that win2k and win98se can't read redhat 9. redhat 9 still can read win2k and win98se. it also has geforce 4 mx working in redhat 9 (not generic or 3d disabled kind of installation).

I allready tried this, using several combinations of (hd#,#):

(hd1,0)
(hd1,1)
(hd0,0)
(hd0,1)

They all didn't work... perhaps Grub can't handle XP's on a SATA, I dunno.

About the fact XP can't read Lunix partitions... I've read there is a way of copying the 512 first bytes of the /boot partition of linux onto your XP-drive, and then add a line in your boot.ini. I allready tried to do this, but I'm not sure I copied the correct 512 bytes... I'll check on this asap. This last method mentioned that you should install your linux boot loader on the first part of the bootpartition of your Linux (which isn't necessary the MBR of that HD), but I choose MBR, so that might be the reason this method didn't work, I dunno.

check this URL so you know what I mean with booting linux from win-bootloader:
http://www.tprthai.net/bootmgr.htm

Greetz,

Bart

http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux...w2k-HOWTO.html

maybe this will help? (i dunno)

I had similar problems, first between an IDE and an SCSI disk; later with a second IDE disk that was too large for my BIOS to be recognised properly.

Generally there seems to be no problem when all OS's lie on just one disk.

Therefore I chose the following solution:

(1) Create an ext2 partition of 100-200 MB on the disk which is primary and first in boot sequence. You may have to use a partition resizing tool to make space for this partition, but as not much space is needed this should be possible.

(2) Install your Linux on any disk you like. Do not accept the standard partition settings, but rather enter "do-it-yourself" mode. In the fdisk program which will come up, choose the partition you created in step 1 and mount /boot there.

[Basically this will install the kernel and boot up files on your first disk, so they are easily accessible at boot-up time. Once your kernel is loaded, it will be able to see your other disks.]

(3) Choose GRUB as your bootloader and install it into the Master Boot Record of your first disk. This requires a brave heart, because if something goes amiss, you might lose the ability to boot your Windows. But do not despair - there is always the Windows rescue cd... and besides, you can fix GRUB problems, if any, from the Linux installation.

[Normally your Windows partition is recognized during install and an entry is made like the one you posted into a GRUB ini file. Now you should be able to boot both OS's from your primary disk.]
----------------------------------------------------------------

(4) Now comes the interesting part. If you would like to install additional Linuxes somewhere on your disks, go ahead. Just don't let them interfere with your first Master Boot Record and your /boot partition, and choose GRUB as your booting program. E. g. you might allow GRUB to be installed on the Master Boot Record of a secondary disk each time.

(5) Then copy the kernel file from any new Linux installations into the /boot partition you created in step 1 and adjust your GRUB ini file settings in that partition to accomodate the new installation. You can instruct GRUB in the ini file to tell the kernel during boot that all its files are lying on a specific partition. (You might look at the ini file entry that your installation in step 3 created and copy and adjust from that. Just be aware that not all kernel options are valid for each Linux.) Thus GRUB will load the required Linux installation.

This works fine for me.

I used a very similar how-to for my old dual boot. This is the exact article: http://www.littlewhitedog.com/content-52.html.

It worked fine, even though linux and windows were on totally separate drives. It ran with XP pro, and Red Hat 7.2.

To use the NT boot loader(as opposed to lilo or grub) you'll need to set the windows HD as the default boot drive.

Often, the issue is that you are booting from one hd, but then attempting to use the Windows boot loader on another hd ... as described in the grub info file, Windows boot loaders have trouble loading off of drives that are not considered "hd0" by the BIOS. The answer is to use the "map" command in your grub conf file:

With this configuration, I am able to have a Linux IDE drive (w/ GRUB in MBR) which can boot Win2K pro off of a SATA drive (hd1 below).

E.g....

rootnoverify (hd1,1)
makeactive
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

Greetings,

I have my current grub.conf setup to boot win98 as one option where the drive is actually the third device.
...
title Win98
rootnoverify (hd2,0)
map (hd0) (hd2)
map (hd2) (hd0)
chainloader +1
...

My question - is it straightforward to upgrade this drive to WinXP or will I need to make the drive my main boot device and then move it back to hdc1, i.e., will grub survive the reboots as part of the XP install process or will I break something doing this?

tnx - john