RedHat 9 startup disk
 

Hi all,

I installed RH9 with my previuos XP using System Commander. Installation went fine, and I even created a startup floppy, but when I boot from A: Linux starts to load but the says "Error booting, press any key to restart your computer". Why??? :(

Then I tried to make the startup disk again with rawrite and bootdisk.img, over writing the floppy and realised this is used for starting the installation.

Now what? I cant find any info anywhere about how I can make the startup disk again, without re-installing linux all over again and why didn't the startup floppy work? The floppy is new and works.

pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeaase help!!!

Not exactly sure why your bootdisk didnt work but try create another one with /sbin/mkbootdisk utility.

You'll want to make a 'rescue' floppy. There should be a rescue image with the bootdisk image. If not, there's an image on the redhat site. Once that boots, you can probably use the help options to figure out the rest of the process.

Can't find that
 

I can't find that, is it on the ext3 partition? If so , I can't access it without linux.. can I?

Is there any way I can add a line to System Commander (my bmultiboot program) to boot from /hda8 ? I tried to set 'toggle bootable' on that partition but SysCom didn't recognize it.

And my XP is NTFS, in case that is a part of the problem.

Ah yeah, sorry didnt read your post fully
you can either use the rescue mode, or try use a generic grub bootdisk, i created one which you can get here:

http://ryantsai.ozforces.com.au/grubdisk.img

after it boots up you'll get a grub prompt, first set the root partition to where your /boot is, eg "root (hd0,1)" for second partition on first hdd, "root (hd0,2)" for third partition on first hdd and so on.
if it displays your linux filesystem corectly then you're on the right track.
next select a kernel, for default redhat installation you probably gonna use "kernel /boot/vmlinuz" then load initrd "initrd /boot/initrd" note that tab filename completion works under grub prompt, finally type "boot" and it should take you to your redhat installation, if evreything is fine.

You probably need to install grub into /dev/hda8
with the grub prompt, either with the bootdisk or inside redhat, use "setup (hd0,X)" after setting the root to install it, X is the number you used to setup root in grub.

Thanks for all your help but I couldn't fix it, it just won't go the way described. Linux is always such a pain to install.

Ok so if instead of "putting boot files in the first sector of ext3" I put them in MBR, will it mess up my XP? I have System Commander installed already, and I think it will be able to boot Linux if I put the boot files in MBR during linux install. But I'm worried that XP will give me that HAL.DLL error again.

If you put grub/lilo in mbr, though I haven't used system commander before, if its used for loading multiple operating system on boot, chances are that it lives inside MBR, therefore installing grub/lilo into mbr will overwrite it.
When you tried to do "root" in grub prompt were you able to set it to your linux partition so that it displays ext3?
Actually make a screenshot of your partition layout in diskmanager in xp and post it here.