Dual booting Fedora and XP help
 

So I bought a second HD last weekend so that I could dual boot Linux and Windows XP. I set the jumpers on my second hard drive so it is a slave drive. Then I started up my computer with a DVD that had Fedora Core 5 on it. I went through the steps to install Fedora Core 5 (I choose it to use only the free space on my slave drive).

So the install process went very smooth and it asked me to reboot my computer. So i did and windows XP started up. So I think I have Fedora properly installed on my sound HD I just don't know how I can boot it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, this is my first time every playing around with Linux and I cant wait to see what it looks like.

:Pengy:

You need to either change the XP boot.ini file to give you the option to boot to either Linux or XP, or, alternatively, install the GNU boot loader (GRUB) in the MBR of your "master" drive.

The later option is the easiest. In fact, you should have accepted the installer's offer to install GRUB in the MBR. But you can still do it.

Just boot from your Fedora install DVD (or the rescue CD), and enter linux rescue at the first prompt.

After the system boots in rescue mode, just enter the commands (The "#" stands for the input prompt character, not something you type.)

If you'd prefer not to overwrite the XP MBR, change the /dev/hda to /dev/hdb above, and then use your BIOS to set your system to boot from the "slave" drive instead of the "master."

To boot using the boot.ini method requires that you create a bootable MBR image as a file on your XP "C:\" drive, and have your boot.ini file look something like this:But you should't have to do that unless you've got special needs.

So i tried to install the GNU boot loader in the MBR of my master drive but I can not touch my master drive because the Linux partition is only on my slave drive (I think... does that make sense?).

Anyways I booted up my computer with the install disk in then went to Linux rescue like you said and put in the commands and when I typed grub-install /dev/hda then hit ENTER i got the message /dev/hdb1 does not have any corresponding BIOS drive. After that I typed reboot, got some funny prompt things about rebooting, then some how I was able to shut down my computer.

I am kind of a noob so bear with me,

So i want to try the second way using the boot.ini do you think you could explain a bit more on how to do it this way.

My origonal boot.ini file looked like this:
So when I modded my boot.ini file I got a little scared when booting in windows and Linux did not work. But I was able to get to XP threw Gateway Rescue. Thank goodness, anyways all my Linux stuff is partitioned to my F drive.

Did you try the simpler way I suggested, where you make your slave drive bootable with GRUB installed on it, and then changed your BIOS to boot first from the slave drive? (i.e., grub-install /dev/hdb)

You mentioned "Gateway," and the reason I was using the "boot.ini" method was that I had installed Fedora on a Gateway laptop, and Gateway had installed a "mini Windows" on a small FAT partition, and set the boot.ini file to boot that OS first.

If you look at your boot.ini, you'll see that the initial boot is to "partition(1)," not "(0)." That's probably the small FAT partition like I have on my system.

So, if your BIOS insists on booting the "rescue" OS first, here's what I suggest:

Edit: Opps -- That's not quite right. Changes in red below.

1) Install GRUB on the slave drive. (You have to have a working GRUB installed.)
2) Boot into Fedora (either using your BIOS to boot the slave drive, or "linux rescue."
3) Attach a FAT partition, say D:\ thusley:
3a) mkdir /mnt/d
3b) mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/d -t vfat -o rw
4) Use the command dd if=/dev/hdb of=/mnt/d/linux.bin b=512 to copy the GRUB MBR to D:\linux.bin.
(This assumes that the Gateway small FAT partition is your D: drive, and is the second partition of the master drive.)
5) Boot into Windows and copy D:\linux.bin to C:\linux.bin (and, if it all works, you can come back and delete D:\linux.bin later. Oh, the reason for the FAT partition is because both Fedora and Windows can read and write to FAT partitions. Be careful, though: the dd command will happily trash any NTFS partition to which it writes. You could use a floppy or USB drive for this step if you've got one. Just change the of parameter as needed.)
6) Edit your boot.ini file to look like mine, above.

Reboot, and see if it works.

(The reason you need a working GRUB installed is that having Windows boot the copied boot image "simulates" actually booting that drive.)

OK I have two drives, my main drive is C:\ my slave drive is F:\, all my linux stuff is on the F:\ drive. There is no linux software on my C:\ drive, so how would I copy GRUB MBR to my F:\ drive? If thats what I should do. Im sry I am realy confused about GRUB and linux commands in general.

Oops! I messed up. :cry: See the changes in my prior post, above.

To answer your question, we aren't trying to install the MBR in "linux.bin," just trying to make a copy of the MBR, and then telling XP to use that copy instead of the "real thing" to start the system.

The commands I've suggested that you use are:

1) mkdir to create a new directory to use as a mount point
2) mount to attach your D: drive to that mount point (In *nik systems, you don't have seperate drives, you "attach" physical devices to your "file system," and have a single "tree" starting from your "root," called "/") the ls command can be used to "list" the contents of any "leaf" of the tree.)
3) dd to copy "raw" bytes from the MBR to a file on the D:\ drive

In Fedora, you can read a description of each command using the man command (e.g.: man cp) or, for mst commands, the [info command (e.g.: info cp).

The man command is more terse, but often writes more that will fit on a screen, so you have to "pipe" the output into another command (usually less, which lets you "scroll" up and down in the output with your arrow keys) for example, man dd | less. You get out of "less" by typing the character "q".

info is more powerful, and entering the command info will display a screen telling you to type "h" for a tutorial on how to use it. It's a good place to start learning the Linux commands.

Anyhow, it's 3 AM here now, and I'm going (back) to sleep. (I woke up at 2 and realized I'd messed up. Again, sorry.

Oh, you mentioned that your slave drive is "F:", so I'm assuming that C: is an NTFS drive for XP, D: is a FAT drive for the "rescue" stuff, and "E:" is the DVD drive. (Did you know that you can change XP's drive letters to whatever you want to use? I always make my DVD my "V:" drive, just because I think it looks nicer that way.)

Ok I did got a little info on my system, I have a
3½ Floppy (A:)
DVD-RW (D:)
DVD (E:)

[DISK 0]Local Disk (C:) Partition NTFS {74GB}
[DISK 1]Local Disk (F:) Partition {111GB}
Partition {102MB}

The status of the Unnamed Partiton is (Active) and the status of DISK 0 (C:) is (System)

And my Boot loader looks like this
So the commands
Will create a partion that both XP and Linux and read, then it will copy linux.bin to it, then from there I can move the linux.bin to my C drive? Also you said that the dd command can trash a NTFS partition, so would it destroy my C: Partition?

First, it's probably a typo, but the second command in your second code block should be "mount," not "mound."

But, looking at your drive list, I see that my assumption that you had a FAT partition for your D: drive was incorrect.

You do, however, have a floppy disk drive. So you can use that to move the MBR image:Then change your boot.ini file to look like this:if you want to default to XP after 30 seconds.

Altenatively, you could useto boot to Fedora after 5 seconds.

I fomated a blank disk in windows does it make a diffrence where I format it?

I went into Linux Rescue mode and it did not see the floppy drive