LinuxQuestions.org - I need help with booting and partitioning

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I need help with booting and partitioning

Hello and thanks for taking the time to read this post. I just installed SuSE 9 on a 2500 amd with two hd. On hda is windows xp, hdb has SuSE. During the install I made three partitions one for boot, one for swap and one for root. Apparently, I didn't mark them during the install. I had planned to not load the boot.ini files to the MBR but on the first block of the boot partition then copy the boot sector to my "C" drive on windows and use the NT loader to dual boot both OS. The option I chose was to make a boot floppy. Now the 64 dollar question. Will I be able to mark and format the first two partitions correctly then edit my boot.ini files without a reinstall? And if I can which partition do I need to make active in windows for the systems to boot correctly? Also how do I copy the boot sector from the floppy to SuSE? Thanks for you help and respose. I don't think I could do this on my own without major mistakes, similar to the ones I have already made. Fdisk shows these partitions on hdb.
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 129 1036161 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 130 259 1044225 82 Linux swap
/dev/hdb3 260 4865 36997695 83 Linux

Thanks,

Cliff

Did you install GRUB/LILO on your /boot (hdb1) partition?

I used the default choice which I believe is grub. How do I determine if grub is even on the first partitiin? Thanks

Cliff

To (re)install run "grub-install /dev/hdb1"
Then boot into Linux, extract the bootsector using

Code:

dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=suse9.bin bs=512 count=1

copy suse9.bin to where boot.ini is using a floppy disk or whatever, then add this to your boot.ini:

Code:

c:\suse9.bin="Suse 9"

Then Bob's your uncle(hopefully)

Demonbane, didn't work, maybe I'm missing something.

Demonbane,

I followed your instructions exactly. Somehow the bin file is not getting copied to the floppy. I can't read it in linux or windows xp. Is there some attributes that I need to change to make this possible? I've made sure the floppy was mounted. I know I'm missing something simple.
Thanks for your help,

Cliff

Make sure it has FAT filesystem not ext2, and unmount it after you finish copying, do it all manually in the console.

Or just email it to yourself, upload to some webspace, use explore2fs etc, there's plenty of ways.

EDIT: nevermind I saw your other post, glad you've sorted it out