Installing linux on 2nd Harddisk
 

Here's my dilemma, I got 3 harddisks, the first harddisk is running windows xp, the 2nd one is for my data, and the third 1 is blank. I been trying to install redhat 9 linux on the 3rd harddisk without success.

I do not want grub to take over windows xp bootloader, so what I did was to create install grub into the root section and not in the MRB.

Now when I edit my BIOS to boot from the 3rd HD, I just get a grub word and nothing else, it doesn't seem to load linux. I then have to press alt del to reboot. I did not elect to create a boot disk as my floppy is toasted. Can anyone offer some suggestions?

Your problem may be your BIOS. In some bioses, the "boot from harddrive X" really means "Rearrange all my drives so the drive I want to boot from looks like the first drive" Which will naturally break grub, since grub was configured to look on the third drive for linux, but its now the first drive.

In your case, I suggest you try http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

This will let you add a "Linux" entry to NTLDR's options, to make it boot grub on the third drive. Then you won't even have to mess with the BIOS to decide how you want to boot.

Additionally, your RH cdrom (I assume you used a cdrom since your floppy is toasted) doubles as a rescue disc. Just boot from it, and at the very beginning you should be given a rescue option.

I looked at the boot part url, and it said that i should have :

"The only thing I highly suggest is : your active partition on your first hard disk must be a FAT16 primary partition. This may be a small partition"

but my primary harddisk is NTFS, so will boot part mess up my windows boot loader?

Also another thing is that when i boot up the linux rescue mode, i cant seem to locate my GRUB.conf file. Is that due to a limitation in rescue mode?

What I had originally tried to do was make a FAT32 partition on my first harddisk, and boot linux in rescue mode and try to write the linux.bin file to the FAT32 partition,, and then copy that file to windows and have the windows bootloader boot the file.

However as I am a total newb to linux, I did not know how to mount the fat32 partition.

i believe you need to create a linux bootsector to put in your root windows directory, then point to it in c:\boot.ini file. (edit: that's how i am doing it with win2k, and it is working fine.)

these instructions shows how to do it with LILO, but they could probably be modified easily for grub.

How to dual-boot Windows NT/2000/XP and Linux using NTLDR
http://jaeger.morpheus.net/linux/ntldr.php

Each harddisk has a MBR, so overwritting the MBR on Hard Disk 1 is want you want to avoid. Try disconnecting Hard disks 1 and 2, and then install RH 9 and install grub to the MBR.

you definitely want to avoid overwriting the MBR on hd1, but you don't need to disconnect the hard disks to do that. ime that can cause a lot of problems of its own. just install grub to the boot partition of your linux disk ( go through install again, or grub-install /dev/hdxx where hdxx is your boot linux partition), then dd the info to a linux.bin file ( dd if=/dev/hdxx of=linux.bin bs=512 count=1 ).

copy that linux.bin file you just made to your root windows directory, then change the windows boot.ini file by adding the appropriate line to the end, e.g., c:\linux.bin="My Linux OS"

done!

Either would work, I only suggested my way as a bar of saftey to make sure the MBR on disk 1 isn't overwritten. Which ever way is more comfortable to you.

I still need to know how to mount the FAT32 partition so that I can transfer than .bin file to windows, got no floppy :(

where do you stand now? i.e., what can you boot into?

Thx for all the help guys, I was finally able to mount my FAT32 partition after finding out where it was using fdisk -l after that I just mounted my fat32 hd then copied the linux.bin to that partition and then copied that linux.bin to my c: and then edited boot.ini. all seems to be working fine now