Win2K/FC6 dual boot didnt work...

MythN00b · 11-18-2006, 04:27 AM

I'm keen to have Linux on our old desktop machine so I can sneak off and run a MythTv client when my 2 year old daughter is hogging the TV watching "Wiggles" DVD's again and again....

I'd be happy to blow away Windows altogether and have a fresh Linux install - but if theres a moments downtime without appropriate access to the right applications for my wife she'll freak - so I'm trying to get a dual boot going so I can "test the waters" of Linux's family friendlyness so to speak!

I have 2 10GB disks... and have Win2K on one of them with a 3Gb NTFS System partition and a 7Gb FAT32 DATA partition (after I reformated the FAT one having read some dual boot stuff!)

The other 10Gb disk I have dedicated to Linux and have installed FC6 on - but since the machine boots into windows I have yet to see if the install was good or not - I cant boot into it!

I found a few HOWTO docs so attempted the following:

Booted Linux from CD in 'rescue mode' - and did a 'df' ... discovered that teh FAT partition wasnt visible so mounted it:

mount -t vfat /dev/hda5 /mnt/windows

trid to copy something? using this command:

Code:

dd if=/dev/hdb2 of=/mnt/windows/linux.bin bs=512 count=1

(where /dev/hdb2 is the boot partition on the linux disk)

I then rebooted into windows and sure enough could see the 512byte linux.bin file which I dutifully copied onto the NTFS partition on C:\linux.bin

I modified the C:\boot.ini which now looks like this:

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
C:\linux.bin="Linux - Fedora Core 6"

When I reboot the machine I get the lovely prompt asking me which OS I want - but if I select the Linux option I just get a back screen with a single flashing cursor.

Have I missed something? What should I do? Can anyone point me at a step-by-step HOWTO for getting a Linux dual boot going without destroying an existing Win2K installation?

pixellany · 11-18-2006, 10:20 AM

Your method presumes that you put grub on the Linux boot partition during the Fedora install. Note that "boot partition" means the partition that includes the /boot directory. If you have 1 Linux partition mounted at / (root), then that is also the boot partition.

What you are doing in this method is copying an instance of grub stage1--hardcoded to point to the right directory--into a file that can be linked to NTLDR. When the Fedora installer puts grub in the partition boot sector, it is doing that hardcoding.

I have seen MANY tuturials on how to do this, but I have never done it. Here is on that looks coherent:
http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux...w2k-HOWTO.html

Another easy option is to simply put grub on a floppy and use that to boot Fedora. You can probably do this from the Fedora install cd---or from any of the various "live CD" distros.

grub manual here:
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html

MythN00b · 11-18-2006, 03:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pixellany

Another easy option is to simply put grub on a floppy and use that to boot Fedora.

Unfortunately I no longer have a floppy drive in this machine (needed the space for the second IDE drive)!

thanks for the link - thats the one I used already!...I cant remember whether my /boot was on a different partition than the rest of the linux install so maybe I'll try 'dd if=/dev/hdb2 of=/mnt/windows/linux.bin bs=512 count=1' with a different 'if' value (pointing to "/" instaed of "/boot" and see what happens?

pixellany · 11-18-2006, 04:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MythN00b

Unfortunately I no longer have a floppy drive in this machine (needed the space for the second IDE drive)!

thanks for the link - thats the one I used already!...I cant remember whether my /boot was on a different partition than the rest of the linux install so maybe I'll try 'dd if=/dev/hdb2 of=/mnt/windows/linux.bin bs=512 count=1' with a different 'if' value (pointing to "/" instaed of "/boot" and see what happens?

That does not make sense... You don't have code pointing to "/boot" now.

You have to know the partition where the bootup files are---I just noticed that you had tried hdb2--Why? What is on hdb1?

What you may need to do is get a "live CD" distro such as Knoppix, so you can see what partitions you have. It also may be easier to just re-install Fedora.

blackhole54 · 11-18-2006, 04:58 PM

Isn't the relevant partition the one that the bootloader (stage 1) was installed to rather than the /boot partition per se? I thought this could be specified as any partition, or the MBR. Or for that matter (gasp) the first 512 bytes of hdb.

If somebody knew what to look for, you should be able to locate this from its content. I would think it would be quite similar (but not identical) to the stage1 file that's part of the whole GRUB package.

Am I totally barking up the wrong tree here?

EDIT: In any case, the live CD suggestion is good.

pixellany · 11-19-2006, 09:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blackhole54

Isn't the relevant partition the one that the bootloader (stage 1) was installed to rather than the /boot partition per se? I thought this could be specified as any partition, or the MBR. Or for that matter (gasp) the first 512 bytes of hdb.

If somebody knew what to look for, you should be able to locate this from its content. I would think it would be quite similar (but not identical) to the stage1 file that's part of the whole GRUB package.

Am I totally barking up the wrong tree here?

EDIT: In any case, the live CD suggestion is good.

With grub at least, the stage1 code goes in one of two places:

mbr--ie sector 0 (the first sector)
boot sector of the partition which includes the /boot directory
<<EDIT: The typical partition starts with two empty sectors. The firs of these is the "boot sector".>>

In the latter case, **something** still needs to be in the mbr.

Regardless of where grub goes, it has to be hardcoded to point to the partition where the kernel and grub.conf are located. AFAIK, this is synonymous with the location of /boot.

What makes these discussions forever confusing is the mixing of partition names and directory names. For example, there is no /boot partition on a hard disk. There is the partition that gets MOUNTED to /boot.