I installed RH 9 but now I can't boot it without the boot up disk. Can someone help me configure a boot loader (grub) so I will be able to boot linux or windows XP with it. Can anyone help please?

thanks

Rok

quick answer: reinstall it and then this time choose the mbr install of the bootloader of your choice or have the install create a boot floppy

quick answer: reinstall it and then this time choose the mbr install of the bootloader of your choice or have the install create a boot floppy

I guess you have one partition for XP and another one for RH 9 on your harddisk? If this is the case, you should boot your system with the XP bootmanager.

Install grub into the bootsector of your RH 9 boot partition, not into the mbr of your harddisk. If your hardisk is an ide drive the location for grub should be /dev/hdax. hda = first ide drive, hdb = second ide drive and so on. x stands for the number of your RH 9 boot partion. Don't install grub to the device /dev/hda because that will destroy the XP bootmanager.

After you have done this, copy the grub bootsector onto a floppy disk. Assuming an installation on your first ide disk, you can do this by typing "dd if=/dev/hdax of=bootsec.lin count=1 bs=512" and "cp bootsec.lin /media/floppy" into a shell. The floppy has to be mounted to the directory /media/floppy in this example.

Be careful with the dd command! Don't mix up with "if=" and "of=".
Reboot your system to XP and copy the bootsec.lin file into your XP root directory. After that you have to edit the file "boot.ini" in your root directory. Add a line c:\bootsec.lin = "RH 9" if c:\ is your XP bootdisk.

That's it. Reboot your system and choose the operating system you want to work with.

Obviously make sure grub is installed and then do:

grub-install /dev/hda

This will do everything for you.

Think grub-install is right.

Assuming you want first hard drive to boot.

Thanks for the replys but it still doesn't work. I did what Spot suggested but when I try to boot linux I get a message that says "\system32\hal.dll is missing". But I have the file. Can anybody help.

Thanks

Rok

Assuming you get the grub screen on startup and choose the linux option then you get the message, then it seems like grub is talking to Windows instead of Linux.

Could try entering commands manually on grub command line.

How about:
root (hd0,1) #assuming linux on second partition
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2
boot

If doesn't work try fiddling with it. e.g. kernel vmlinuz root...

It it works enter it in the relevant block in ?menu.lst. /boot/grub/menu.lst. But don't put 'boot'.

Sorry if my earlier advice would have buggered Windows, I don't know.