Dual booting Red Hat Linux 7.3

dark_light · 09-03-2002, 03:47 PM

Hi guys i m really having problems with this Redhat Linux 7.3 when i try to dual boot it with winxp

i have used RH Linux 7.0 and it worked fine while dual booting but when i do the same thing i.e putting mbr on boot partition " in 7.3 then it doesn't works , now im booting using a floppy which is very non-professional.

so help me out guys.

i have installed xp on hda0 and i have installed linux on hda6

everything else is fine .its just dualbooting which doesn't works

so guys plz help me out

L.B · 09-03-2002, 04:11 PM

When you put 'MBR' on the Linux boot partition it will not enable you to start Linux.
You have to use the MBR of the drive, where you have the MS MBR at the moment.
You can do this by installing Grub or Lilo to the MBR (not the Linux boot partition) or by setting up the MS boot loader to chainload the Linux boot loader you already installed.
Search Google to find out how to do the above.

dark_light · 09-04-2002, 08:23 PM

Well can't u just tell me how can i do it. cause it will be a bit more time consuming to search on the web and i don't have time these days

i installed xp on hda0 first and then linux on hda6 .hence the boot partition is hda0 at the moment.

so what should i do. i have installed lilo but it doesn't works

thanks in advance

Thymox · 09-04-2002, 08:32 PM

Check the very first line of the file /etc/lilo.conf. Normally this should be /dev/hda to put LiLo into the MBR on the primary master disk. It sounds like yours it probably /dev/hda6 or something.

Try changing this line (you'll need to be root to edit the file), then rerun lilo (/sbin/lilo) to put the settings in place.

chem1 · 09-04-2002, 08:54 PM

WHy don't you let the Windows MBR do the booting for both Linux and Windows
IF you are interested then I can explain to you how to achieve that. I am using the smae technique on RH 7.3 and W2K and it works fine.
ON the other hand when I earlier installed LILO into the MBR of the primary disk and tried to boot Mandrake 8.1, my MBR was screwed up and I had to format my drive, since W2K rescue console was unable to repair the MBR

Hope this helps...

exigent · 09-04-2002, 09:51 PM

i was under the impression that xp didn't allow changing of the MBR on the master block. i'm not sure, but i think that you can't change it if you are using xp.... am i wrong?

jschiwal · 09-04-2002, 11:20 PM

Here is a Microsoft link for instructions on editing the boot.ini menu in Windows XP.
http://support.micro$oft.com/default...;EN-US;q289022
HOW TO: Edit the Boot.ini File in Windows XP

This site has an example of a Win XP / Red Hat linux multiboot setup.http://www.zen.home.att.net/linxp.html

My HP laptop has a hidden partition (HDA1) that is formatted in FAT rather then NTFS so the MBR resided there, I didn't have to do anything special for multibooting to work.

note: the first link keeps getting the letter 's' changed to a dollar sign. I tried re-editing twice. What gives?

born4linux · 09-05-2002, 05:05 AM

you post for us the output of fdisk -l in your linux system and the contents of grub.conf. We can help you quickly with that info.

dark_light · 09-05-2002, 10:14 PM

Alright chem1 im interested in ur way .
Show me how to do it.
actually i was looking for it but couldn't find a way to change window mbr

exigent · 09-05-2002, 11:15 PM

the windows mbr is probably on the master block. however, i think that xp automatically changes it everytime you boot up. i think that you might be able to download and use a third-party boot utility, like partition magic or system commander. i use system commander with suse and win98se, and it works wonderfully, automatically detecting all the partitions and giving me the options that i need...

Kryptow · 09-05-2002, 11:47 PM

I'm not sure if this can work with LILO since it was made to be implemented with GRUB but here you go.

The following you would add to your GRUB.conf file:

Code:

title windows xp
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

This works if you installed Windows first and placed the boot loader in the MBR.

But there is also another way of doing it during the installation of the boot loaderi n redhat 7.3 if you specified a label for your windows partition it would automatically give you the dual boot option. But if you didn't then you would have to use the code mentioned above.

dark_light · 09-06-2002, 03:16 PM

Nobig deal i will install Grub but im very new to linux so how can i know the partitions information of My harddisk. i have tried fdisk but i think im doing it wrong as i don't know the command that much

The hda0 is the partition where linux is installed?

How will i edit the Grub.config file?

The code u told would be written at the start or end?

In this case the mbr should be on First sector or boot partition ?

I know all of them are silly questions but ......

awdoyle · 09-07-2002, 02:49 AM

dark_light - to tell you the truth, I booted my system from CD to re-discover my partition setup.

I have a similar setup that has been gnawing at me. 80gb drive with XP and Red Hat 7.3, but it only boots to XP. The partition table in disk druid looks like:
hda1=xp
hda2=boot
hda3=root
hda4=ext
hda5=swap
XP was installed first, and during the disk druid portion of the RH install, GRUB was installed to the first sector of the root partition, as opposed to MBR (oops I think). The page http://www.zen.home.att.net/linxp.html (great link jschiwal!) does show a good walk-through - most web searches I've done have pointed to similar fixes. The below formula of commands ends up putting a 1kb copy of bootsect.lin on my disk. I'll paste the shell log:
# mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt
# dd if=/dev/hda3 bs=512 count=1 of=mnt/bootsect.lin
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
# umount /dev/fd0
When I copy the bootsect.lin to my winxp c:\ root directory, then add
c:\bootsect.lin="Linux"
as the last line of my boot.ini file and reboot, the menu offers both xp and linux, but when I select linux, it hangs. I think the file copied incorrectly to floppy, and wasn't big enough. But I don't know how to fix it. I don't think this part matters (yet), but my GRUB.conf file does include the last 3 lines pointed out by Kryptow. Can someone point out my mistakes or suggest a better fix?
Many thanks in advance!

itismike · 09-08-2002, 07:00 AM

I'm just testing a theory for jschiwal here...If I'm wrong then this post will look kind of silly.

Since we're on linuxquestions.org, I think any mention of the micro$oft name (I typed an 's' there,) gets changed to micro$oft (I typed a dollar sign '$.')

BTW, if it's capitalized, Microsoft keeps it's 's.'

-Mike

exigent · 09-08-2002, 03:12 PM

microsoft

wow, that's really weird....