mankdrake 10.1 + boot
 

Hi... I suppose that u have heard about the problems that the latest distribution face... I am talking about the dual boot pronblems..
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ntopic24886.html
http://mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=18957

I want to know if the mandrake 10.1 distro solves the above problems or not..
Do u know something about it?
Thx a lot
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/101/community

I wouldn't call this a "bug" or a problem with the last distributions, rather it is a limitation on how you go about setting up partitions during the installation.

I see this question all the time here.

It seems that there are not enough guidelines for people to get this part of the setup right.

The bottom line is that both Windows and Linux want to boot up from PRIMARY partitions. People are often creating extended partitions unknowingly as they are utilizing remaining freespace on their drives.

The easiest way to approach this is to install a /boot partition where-in the kernel resides "low" on the hard drive.

E.G.

hda1 /boot < --- Linux boot a PRIMARY partition
hda2 /Windows < - Windows XP - A PRIMARY partition
hda3 SWAP < --- A Primary partition
hdaX / < --- Linux root and other volumes, can be logical volumes on EXTENDED partitions.

There can only be 4 primary partitions on a drive. OS's can boot from these partitions but not from the extended partition.

In linux's case once the kernel is loaded from /boot it finds itself elsewhere on the hard drive, even on extended partition.

Adhere to the above and you have no problems.

In mandrake 10.1 is this solved or not?

There is nothing to be "solved".

This was never a problem to be "solved".

Of course ... a problem exists... U can call it as u wish problem,bug e.t.c
The first time a user installs mandrake then he can't operate xp..... He is not obliged to know what u have (correctly) described in your first post.... Think the first time user which he wants to learn about linux so he has decided to install mandrake....... The mandrake says that linux can support dual os but after the installation nothinkg works....... So... is this problem-bug-but implementation solved for the user that need to install mandrake?
Thx a lot for your answers.

During mdk setup/install, when asked where to put lilo, mbr or 1st sector of boot or root partition, select mbr.

There are other ways to do the boot selector thing, windows has another way, check out the win2k section on dual booting, works in winxp too, but I digress.

Selecting the mbr will set a link from mbr to boot. and each time you start your pc lilo will give you a (os-chooser) boot-selector to choose which os you want to boot.

Easy.

No, unfortunately you are looking at it from the "It should do everything for me including make me coffee".

In point of fact you are dealing with a very touchy area, namely the partition table structure of hard drives.

In a CLEAN install where the user does things in the "correct" order...

e.g.

Windows XP installed first on a smaller 20-30 gig drive followed by Linux, there is no problem whatsoever.

On a larger drive things get a little strange because of the way the bioses handle LBA translation and the OS's (XP included) deal with partition tables.

Linux gives you a great degree of control over all of this, but you can mess it up quite easily.

When it comes to partitions on larger drives, a degree of understanding is needed.

The newbie looks at this as it being somehow a failing.

It's not, rather the newbie needs a little instruction.

As a rough guideline:

1) /boot must exist on a PRIMARY partition so the kernel can load.

2) The /boot partition should occur towards the beginning of the drive if you have a larger hard drive.

3) Any other partitions can be created as you please or as the install wants.

4) The Lilo/Grub loader should/must be installed on the mbr unless you want to boot from a floppy or other convoluted mechanism.

5) Do not place /boot at the end of a large hard drive on which you have Xp loaded.

6) If you do not want to be bothered with the above see GlennsPref's suggestion to use a WinXP/2K dual boot scheme, but you'll need to do this manually.

Again this is not a bug, merely a limitation of what the autoinstallers can do without help from you.

I believe the dual boot problem was nothing to do with lilo, but with grub and it affected Suse, Fedora and Mandrake. I believe that if you install lilo, you should be okay.

You are probably correct, though the restriction on the location of the kernel (aka /boot) on a primary partition still applies.

The boot loaders CANNOT handle extended partitions as the boot loaders are typically 2-4 sectors of code.

Once the kernel has loaded it has complete mastery of the drive layout.

So...?? Okey it is a limitation... Do not u agree that the first time user must be warned at the installation time about the limitation u just explained?? The installation procedure must check for this limitations and warn the user.......

Yup that would indeed be ideal and glossed over in the installation.

Unfortunately because of this there are a slew of posts here with people who have

1) Installed Lilo/grub to the wrong place... e.g. to the partition and not the mbr

2) Done what you have talked about

3) Completely screwed up their systems.

Linux distros all provide tools to deal with all of this, including partition resizing, etc.

Unfortunately the bottom line is that if you are using larger drives the partitioning can be rather problematic.

This is not a Mandrake specific problem either, as it happens with all distros.

Yet you have to remember that the reason for all of confusion is that you are trying to do something which is not inherently simple, namely running multiple operating systems on the same machine.

Add to that the fact that Microsoft PURPOSELY wants to make life difficult for people who do this.

E.G.

Try installing XP to a partition AFTER you have installed Linux, and it will blow away the MBR without asking you!!!!

Now which OS has the problem?

Hmmm... Linux tries to co-exist, XP says "screw everyone".

Such is the Microshaft way.

Yes, I see your point now, though totally oblivious of the fact till now.

I have mdk on 2 machines, one is a dual boot with winxp, no extended partitions, and the other is my gateway, numerous partitions, but boot is 2nd from the top.(that is swap, boot, root, home,usr, tmp) so I havent been affected by this as yet.

Excuse me.

carry on fellas. ;)

Wrong, there was a problem
 

What opjose says below is beside the point of the issue at hand, which is the LBA problem.


This occurred in the march-may versions of FC, SUSE, Mandrakelinux and maybe/likely others.


Symptoms:
- installation where new partitions are created
- on a system with windows
- making it dual boot with linux.


Problem:
windows relies in different (incorrect some would say) ways on the BIOS than Linux. Linux 2.6 kernel 'sees' the partitions that get created in a different way.
So the partition table that those versions of Linux correctly created is not usable by windows.


Read this:
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/0...booting91.html
and this:
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7959


The problem is independent of lilo or grub, and has been addressed in later versions - I installed Mandrakelinux 10.1 Community Edition on a Dell Latitude D400, made it dual boot XP - MDK, and it booted fine.


If your bootloader is in /dev/hda (the mbr) you can boot from any partition (as long as it's seen by the system/BIOS), the point of having a /boot in the lower region stems from the days that lilo was not yet able to boot from any partition further than 8GB from the start of the drive.
This was solved some 4 years ago or so.

"If your bootloader is in /dev/hda (the mbr) you can boot from any partition (as long as it's seen by the system/BIOS), the point of having a /boot in the lower region stems from the days that lilo was not yet able to boot from any partition further than 8GB from the start of the drive.
This was solved some 4 years ago or so."


4 years ago? I don't think that is correct.

That would put us at Mandrake 8.x which still had not resolved this problem.


It's not just a question of having /boot in the "lower" region (that is merely for safety), but rather that the kernel must load from a PRIMARY partition, which is key.

Too often the partitioning wizard blithly creates an extended logical partition from which Linux cannot boot, causing grief for the novice.

How do you explain this partition table:

As you can see, I have only one primary partition (psst ... a win leftover, don't tell anyone), 1 linux swap at the end (I have 1GB of RAM, hardly ever need swap so put it where it belongs - far from the beginning of the drive where data transfer is fastest), and 4 linux ext3 partitions - 3 that serve as root partitions alternately, and one rather large one that is my /home.

I don't care for /boot /var and other such partitions, although in some setups they make sense (multiuser / servers) I don't need them.

I have lilo in my mbr on this drive, and it manages to happily boot my linux, whichever one on hda5, 6 or 7.

With your logic this is not possible, or I misunderstood...