GRUB question Arch Linux/XP

RagingGoose · 09-03-2007, 03:42 PM

Hello all,

I just recently tried to set up my first dual boot machine (single hdd) and I'm having a bit of difficulty. My ArchLinux distro boots up fine straight out of GRUB but the XP doesn't. I have Grub setup in root (which contains my /boot) and it does set the XP NTFS partition to bootable when I attempt to load windows but GRUB throws error 13 at me telling me it is an unrecognized or unbootable partition. The real hassel is after I attempt to boot XP and fail I have to use a rescue cd everytime to cfdisk and take off the bootflag from the NTFS and put it back on my root partition otherwise it just looks in the NTFS partition and can't find grub to boot into Arch or XP.

fdisk info:

/dev/sda1 is my NTFS windows partition
/dev/sda2 is my root/boot (with boot flag) partition
/dev/sda3 is my swap
/dev/sda4 is my /home

GRUB menu.lst

Code:

#(0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda2 ro vga=795
initrd /boot/kernel26.img

#(1) Arch Linux
title Arch Backup
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda2 ro vga=795
initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img

#(2) Windows
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Any help with this would be much appreciated.

syg00 · 09-03-2007, 04:19 PM

Sorry, that didn't make a lot of sense to me. Let's see the output from this (from an Arch terminal) - it'll confirm what's in the MBR

Code:

dd if=/dev/sda count=1  2>/dev/null | strings | egrep -i "grub|ntfs"

RagingGoose · 09-03-2007, 04:33 PM

I typed the command you asked after I logged in and I guess it completed the CLI just gave me my next prompt. Is that suppose to be outputting some data to a text file somewhere? Sorry I'm really out of my element at the moment.

Also, to try and simplify the jumble up there, I had an XP installation on my system I shrank the partition down to around 70GB and moved it 10GB away from the start of the drive. I then installed Arch with the /root partition in the 10GB opening at the beginning of the disk. Grub was installed to the root partition so it should be at the beginning of the drive in the MBR. Fdisk shows the sda2 (my root) partition starting at 1 so I'm pretty sure that Grub is in the right place.

Thank you for the help so far sorry I couldn't get your command to work.

EDIT: Quick update I read through your command once more and I changed /dev/sda to /dev/sda2 in your if statement and it output grub, which is where I had planned it to install.

syg00 · 09-03-2007, 04:57 PM

What brand of machine is it ??? Try these commands

Code:

dd if=/dev/sda count=1  | hexdump -C | less
fdisk -l

This will be a fair bit, but let's see it anyway. BTW that's a lower case ell, as in list.

RagingGoose · 09-03-2007, 05:17 PM

It's a custom machine I built. It has been running just Arch for the past few months but I need XP on it for some of my new college classes.

Anyway the results you asked for are:

Code:

1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes (512 B) copied, 1.4594e-05 s, 35.1 MB/s
fdisk: No such file or directory
-l: No such file or directory

I think the less threw off the fdisk part. I only have files from the Base install on the system right now. Anyway a normal fdisk -l reports

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 150.0GB, 150039945216 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 18241 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 byte

Device    | Boot | Start | End   | Blocks    | ID | System

/dev/sda1 |      | 1276  | 10199 | 71682030  | 7  | HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 | *    | 1     | 1275  | 10241406  | 83 | Linux
/dev/sda3 |      | 10200 | 10448 | 2000092+  | 82 | Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4 |      | 10449 | 18241 | 62597272+ | 83 | Linux

Sorry about the weird formatting I'm typing this up on a laptop until I can get this fixed.

pixellany · 09-03-2007, 06:54 PM

Those two lines were separate commands...

Since you can boot into Arch, I'm assuming that you put GRUB in the MBR and not the boot sector of the Arch partition. OR: Were you getting to Arch by setting the boot flag?

Normally, you want GRUB in the MBR, and the Windows partition marked active. Your menu.lst looks correct for that configuration. (except I think you need to add "boot" as the last line of the Windows entry

To put GRUB in the MBR:

grub
root (hd0,1)
setup (hd0)

RagingGoose · 09-03-2007, 07:44 PM

I followed your commands pixellany and installed Grub to the MBR and it did its thing no problem. I also added the "boot" to the last line of my Windows section. I still am able to load GRUB and boot into arch fine but GRUB gives me an error code 13 when I try to boot into the Win XP.

The bootflag is set for /dev/sda2 which is where I have Grub installed at as part of my ArchLinux /root partition. I don't have a seperate /boot partition it is included into the /dev/sda2 partition. I'm thinking maybe something is wrong with the partition that is holding my Win XP (sda1) or maybe I'm missing something in my Grub menu but I have cross checked it against several tutorials.

I just wanted to thank you both again for your time. If nothing comes to mind tonight I might just redo the installs tommarrow and maybe find a step I missed or something.

pixellany · 09-04-2007, 12:18 AM

You probably need to set the boot flag on the Windows partition. It does NOT need to be set for Linux.

You may have GRUB in the bootsector of the Linux partition, but--since it is now in the MBR--the one in the bootsector is not used.

RagingGoose · 09-04-2007, 09:54 AM

I managed to get it working this morning.

I booted into the XP recovery console and used "FIXMBR" to re-write grub temporarily and see if my XP would boot on its own which it could not.

I then went back into the recovery console and did a "FIXBOOT" to re-write windows boot.ini. This allowed windows to boot up.

Lastly I just reinstalled Grub to the MBR with a linux boot cd following Pixellany's instructions.

I just wanted to post a follow up in case anyone searches up this topic with a similar problem. Thanks for the help all.

pixellany · 09-04-2007, 06:09 PM

And thank YOU for sticking with it---LQ should be giving out prizes to members who actually follow-up, say thank you, etc.