Gilbert,

I have been battling to get AmigoXP to work since installing it 7 or 8 months ago.

Initially I had Suse 9.3 on the same machine, so I figured that the Suse implementation of Grub was conflicting with AmigoXP grub.

Anyway, Disk space has become a problem, so I scribbled the Suse partition and did 'fdisk /mbr' intending to finally get Amigo working.

My machine has hda1: OS2 boot partition(that's what cfdisk says)
hda2: NTFS C Drive with XP
hda6: ReiserFS (was mounted /home)
hda7: NTFS (recently formated E Drive)

When I try to boot Amigo, I get the grub> prompt.

grub>find /amigoxp/boot/kernel returns 'File not found'
grub>root (hd0,1) returns 'Unknown File system'

Am I on the right track?

Dave Coventry

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=235596

dosn't amigoXP uses the windows bootloader?

if GRUB, then post grub.conf (or menue.lst)

but alert the developer.

Hey Amigo? I know nothing about amigo but just saw this
http://amigolinux.org/amigoxp/XP-details.htm

To summarise each drive has one MBR which must if bootable jump you to the balance of the booting files.

If you overwrote grub to mbr with suse then its booting files were in Suseś /boot folder.

However a quick read of Amigo is that it creates a loopback device and tricks the hard drive into thinking it is booting into a new format whereas ALL of the booting files are within the special folder/location inside MS.

(2) use you MS cd to rescue your mbr so your mbr points to the NTLDR.exe and com files located on your c drive.

then read all the amigo notes and try again.

(3) I suggest you get a live cd such as knoppix or kanotix and run it with su powers to load QTParted and resize and delete those pesky linux partitions heh heh


4) thankyou for trying to troubleshoot your grub command line but reading the amigo it no good as the grub booting files are inside a MS partition

What did you do after 'fdisk /MBR'?

You have to undeerstand that the GRUB that Amigo-XP uses is not installed to the MBR at all. The Amigo-XP installer (the .bat file) which runs under Windows NT systems, creates a directory on the same drive as your NTLDR and copies the boot files into this directory (\amigoxp\boot). The GRUB bootsector is STAGE1 and the rest of GRUB is STAGE2.
The installer creates an entry in the Windows boot-menu which points to the Amigo-XP GRUB STAGE1.

If you were using regular GRUB which installs to the MBR, it won't have support for NTFS. GRUB is kinda stubborn about being overwritten -LILO installation often fails when trying to overwrite GRUB. You, of course, did it the right way, by restoring a 'sane' Windows/DOS type bootsector.
I'll assume that this allows you to boot Windows XP okay. If so, you should be able to re-run the installer to re-install the Amigo-XP files correctly.
Have you tried running the repair.bat program? I have a feeling that after having changed things around, you may have to manually restore your boot.ini file to the original and remove the /hda2/amigoxp folder.
Does your Windows XP bootup have a menu entry for Amigo-XP still?

Well, it uses the Windows boot loader to load grub.

The installation BAT inserts an AmigoXP option into the boot.ini and places a directory on the C Drive (hda2) C:\amigoxp\boot. The following files are installed in that directory:

initrdxp
kernel
menu.1st
toolkit.gz

On the E Drive (hda7) the entire installation sits in E:\amigoxp\

I'm assuming the c:\boot.ini runs grub on c:\amigoxp which then mounts and chroots to e:\amigoxp

Not sure how it finds drive e: though.

Also, 'find /sbin/init' and 'find /amigoxp/sbin/init' both produce 'File not Found'

Here's the content of menu.1st
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~snip~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
##
# Amigo-Xp Linux GRUB Boot Menu Configuration File!
#

color cyan/blue white/blue

# To boot straight into Amigo-XP with no GRUB menu,
# set timeout to 0 (zero) and uncomment the 'default' line.
#
# Boot automatically after 20 secs.
timeout 20

# By default, boot the first entry.
default 0

# Fallback to the second entry.
fallback 1

# Amigo-XP Linux
title Amigo-XP Linux -Standard Amigo-XP Startup
kernel (hd0,1)/amigoxp/boot/kernel root=/dev/loop7 ro lang=en vga=792 screen=1024x768 depth=24
initrd (hd0,1)/amigoxp/boot/initrdxp
#

# Amigo-XP Linux Safe-Mode
title Amigo-XP Linux Safe-Mode -For Older Hardware
kernel (hd0,1)/amigoxp/boot/kernel root=/dev/loop7 ro lang=en vga=788 noapm noddc noagpgart xmodule=fbdev depth=16 screen=800x600
initrd (hd0,1)/amigoxp/boot/initrdxp
#

# Amigo Rescue ToolKit
title Amigo ToolKit -System Rescue and Maintenance
kernel (hd0,1)/amigoxp/boot/kernel root=/dev/ram init=/sbin/init vga=normal rw
initrd (hd0,1)/amigoxp/boot/toolkit.gz
#
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~snip~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gilbert,

Yes, I fully understand all that

I have done searches for similar problems, uninstalled, reinstalled and run repair.bat

It does boot to the windows boot menu and, if Amigo is selected, it goes to the grub command line.

Are the files really being copied to /hda2/amigoxp/boot?

From the webpage:
'install.bat' then uses a small 32-bit Windows program to install the GRUB bootloader in such a way that GRUB is loaded by Windows OWN 'ntldr' bootloader. GRUB is NOT installed to the MBR of your hard drive as with most Linux installations.

Yes, boot.ini tells NTLDR to look for STAGE1 of GRUB which should be on the same drive as NTLDR itself. Is your NTLDR on /hda1 or hda2? Is the boot.ini on the same drive, or do you have more than one boot.ini or NTLDR? Is there something installed on hda1? If so, what?

The initrd takes care of finding the xpbase.img which contains the loop-back image, formatted with reiserfs. You can also boot Amigo using GRUB (or LILO)which has been installed to MBR. It can also be booted with syslinux, isolinux, or even loadlin. Just point the bootloader to the Amigo-XP kernel and initrd located on any device accesible by the bootloader.

I suspect that your NTLDR may actually be on hda1 and not hda2. If this is the case, then your menu.lst should have hd0,0 instead of hd0,1.
install.bat always tries to put the files on the same drive as NTLDR. If you have muliple copies it may confuse the installer.

GRUB won't find sbin or etc directories since they are inside the file-system image which is mounted later.

Okay, I'copied the linux installation to the c drive. Then reinstalled. Same result. I've changed the hd0,1 to hd0,0 as you sugested. No difference.

If, as you suggest the NTLDR is on hda1, then the amigoxp/boot directory (and it's contents) should be there too.

Only problem is the partition is hidden.

I had a rescue cd that used gentoo live, but I seem to have lost it. The iso is actually on hda6 but catch 22 kicks in.

Run Windows and tell me if you see the amigoxp/boot folder there. Does windows see the hidden partition?
You should be able to boot with any rescue system and unhide the partition, or even use GRUB to do that.
Are your NTLDR and boot.ini both on the same drive as WindowsXP?

Gilbert,

The amigoxp/boot is there with all files as described in an earlier post.

Hda1 is a hidden partition which, I'm sure, was being reported as a hidden OS2 partition by cfdisk.

I looked at it this afternoon under Ubuntu Live and checked cfdisk, it now says it's hidden Fat32. Either way, when I mount it as vfat and try to list the contents, I get a series of question marks.

Boot.ini is in the root of the C Drive (which also has XP). There is a file called NTLDR but that's located in c:\WINDOWS\I386\.

You can unhide the partition by changing the partition type using cfdisk or fdisk.
I'm pretty sure this is where your problem lies.
BTW, can you post the contents of your boot.ini?

Contents of boot.ini:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~snip~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
c:\amigoxp\boot\stage1="Amigo Linux"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~snip~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just a wee bit nervous about changing the partition table using cfdisk.

Especially when the cfdisk on a gentoo live boot disk says it's a hidden OS2 partition, cfdisk on ubuntu live says it's Fat32 hidden and parted syays it's Fat16 hidden.

Which do I select to change the 'type' soas to stop it being hidden?

Type 6 should work, but what size is it?

As you can see from your boot.ini, Windows is aware of being on the second partition of the first drive. But since the partition is hidden, GRUB doesn't see it. And my installation routine relies on what Windows and GRUB can both see.

You might also try changing the boot.ini entry so it looks like this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\stage1="Amigo Linux"

The best solution is probably to unhide the partition, though and make sure it is *not* bootable. Then try re-running install.bat.

>Type 6 should work, but what size is it?

I tried to back up the partition with partimage which failed "Fat12 unsupported".

The partition is about 4Meg and is not bootable.

I'm not sure what the partition does, but it looks as though it is important.

The PC is a Packard-Bell EasyNote Laptop.