mixed SATA PATA HD dual boot install - need help
 

OK, I am seeking Linux install advice from the very start this time after a fairly bad start 3-4 weeks ago.

Intent is to leave my well maintained WinXP install and install Linux in a dual boot configuration. Unless otherwise told, I don’t really care about 32 vs 64 bit. Use is general business apps, gaming, audio creation and editing (cakewalk, cooledit, iZotope Ozone), digital photography, web and email. Nothing very challenging or exotic. I also happen to work at a large three letter acronym company that is apparently embracing Linux, although I have no connection to anything like that for my day job, and I would like to be out ahead of the curve on this if the decision is ever made to go Linux on the desktop company wide. Plus, I'm just interested.

Hardware:
ASUS K9V SE Deluxe
AMD64 3200
1gb SD RAM (Kingston)
HD1 Seagate 3600xx 80gb PATA with a well maintained WinXP SP2 install, 50% free
HD2 WD800JD 80gb SATA currently 50% NTFS and 50% unformatted , this is where I would like to put a Linux distro or two
HD3 WD800BB 80gb USB external for local and network backup
Audigy MP3+
ATI 9800 Pro 256

Using Kanotix64 Live CD and QTparted (?) I can partition the unformatted space on the SATA drive (SDA2) with the required Linux partitions(?) /... /boot , /swap and a general /ext3 partition. After that I have had some seemingly good installs but then no joy on reboot. Typically I have seen: GRUB and then a hung system, or GRUB stage 1.5 error 17, or Grub stage 1.5 error 22. All seem to point to GRUB having a problem finding where the distro is installed. So…Please if any one wishes to offer advice, please consider step by step kind of directions from the very beginning (wherever you might think that is).

I am comfortable with manipulating my hardware and software, BIOS tweaking, some CLI stuff (but I do not know any Linux konsole stuff), and can follow directions, either posts or how-to’s. At the moment I have, current (burned ISO’s in the past 3 weeks) validated media copies of Knoppix Live CD, Kanotix64 Live CD, FC3 64 DVD and Ubuntu CD’s.

Any takers ?

so, what? nobody knows how to do this?
 

what, is everyone asleep tonight ? or is this just too much a question for you. Seriously, am I trying to do something that just won't work with Linux or what ?

I suppose that I could just try to install one of the distros mentioned on the old Athlon 850 I have lying around here, but that seems kind of wimpy to me.

any takers ?

Grub doesn't give a rats arse about your disk so long as the BIOS presents them. *BUT* it is very particular.
In all likelihood your PATA will be hd0, and your S-ATA hd1 - and, of course, partitions also count from zero, just like the disks.
Post your grub.conf (or menu.lst) and we'll see if we can help. The fact that you get a grub prompt indicates you installed to the MBR o.k., but the conf is probably wrong.

well I'll be danged - first post from HD install
 

Ok, I am still a bit stunned to discover that I was actually able to install Kanotix to my AMD64 system this evening. To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure that I got a dual boot system working, at the post install re-boot, there was a splash screen of some type and then it just went right into Kanotix64. So this post is from firefox running under the HD install.

So, where the heck do I find the grub.conf or menu.lst files.

I'll reboot and look at the splash a bit faster this time and see if I can actually choose WINXP in a dual boot config.

very cool, I must say ... after soooo much prior install crappola too

I'm sure I'll be back with many questions soon .. now on to some diggin' into this new system.

Paul

Re: well I'll be danged - first post from HD install
 

Open a terminal and type in; Just hit the up/down error keys - should stop it for manual selection.
You might want to post the output of the following;

Dual boot works fine - I have a few questions
 

ok, so the system is dual boot, works fine, very cool. Just a few questions.

Can I change the default boot OS in GRUB ?
Can I get Grub to offer me a bit more time to make the first key click before it defaults ?

In the boot menu there are 4 options
1- Kanotix Kernel SDA1
2- Kanotix Kernel x86_64
3- Windows XP/NT/2000 on HDA1
4- Windows XP/NT/2000 on SDA1

ok, there are only 2 OS's on this system, Kanotix x86_64 on SDA1 and WinXP on HDA1. When I look in/Boot/GRUB/menu.lst I only see what appears to be the 2 valid settings, not the additional entry for Kanotix and WinXP. Don't want to sound fussy, but how can I edit the GRUB menu.lst so the real options are presented.

I also unplugged an external USB HD to do the install. Can I just plug this HD in and boot Kanotix in order to find it ? There are no *nix based files on it right now, but I have to reattach this drive as it is my backup storage system for WinXP.

Printer detection and setup seems to be an issue too. I have a LAN attached printer, an HP PSC2510. I can ping it. I followed the auto setup guide, scanned the network, found the HP, chose the recommended hplip "driver" from the provided list and all seemed to install. I can see the HP, and even "send" a test page, but it never prints. I even see the test page job in the spool list, but no print. any ideas ?

I'm sure this will keep on happening for a while as I get used to *nix by way of Kanotix.

Thanks

Paul

Seems like your distro uses grub.conf rather than menu.lst - simple patch to achieve this, so check for that.
In there, there will be timeout and default parameters you can update.

Recognising USB pluggin devices is dependant on the kernel config - hotplug/coldplug, devfs/udev.
Try it and see - can't do any damage.
Hopefully ... ;) <<<---- (joke)

Printers can be a pain - I have mine on my router. CUPS seemed to recognise it, but I had no end of trouble talking to it.
Turns out it was out of black ink, and kept trying to tell the PC. The router just spat.
Eventually I replaced the cartridge as I couldn't print from XP either - all came good.
You're just going to have to perservere.

new questions
 

thanks. I did look in the GRUB menu.lst and it does seem fairly straight forward to change the things I want to change - but - and this is certainly a total noob question .. how the heck do I edit the menu.lst file ?? I make the changes I want but when I try save it I get a "you don't have permission blah blah" message. I tried to look for a way to reset the permission, and also tried to log on as root ... somewhere, but no luck. So ?? how is this done ?

Also, looks like the external USB HD causes GRUB some problems. When I reattach it and power it up before boot, or in WinXP, it comes up no problem, but then if I reboot to Kanotix, I'm back to one of my original GRUB errors GRUB stage 1.5 error 22. Interesting.

You're damned straight about printing, tried it several ways so far and no joy ... going to have to get that working in order to think of this as a working system.

regards

Paul

Are you saying this distro doesn't have a root user ???. Bleh !!! I dropped Ubuntu for just this reason.
Easiest might be to open a terminal and Will put you in as root - may (should) ask for a password. Could be your password, could be root password.
If there is no root password, and you need it, try;And give something you're going to remember.
Once in the terminal, pick an editor of choice, say;Will usually give you a full-screen editor (vim) tha's pretty acceptable to new users.

With the external in try and see what it's getting called. Also see if the menu.lst is being updated - can't believe it is, but something sounds odd.

root user ? I think so
 

ok, remember I are a newbie at this Linux stuff.

The install process requested both a user and user password as well as a root password, which I set. I have got as far as being able to log in as root in a konsole session, so I think it has root access. I'll try the vi command to try the edits you suggested.

As far as the external USB HD, I'll have to try to plug it in after boot, because if I try it before boot, GRUB seems to hang on stage 1.5 error 22.

Lots to learn here. I'm very rusty using a CLI too so its slow going just yet.

Printing is still a big no go, and I will not get a great deal of time to mess with the new OS this week... day job you know

Thanks

Paul

Re: root user ? I think so
 

This makes a *lot* more sense - you'll probably find the external is being assigned hd1, and the SATA shunted out to hd2. Would mess grub up no end. When it's added after the boot, it'd be getting assigned to hd2, as the SATA is already at hd1.
Previously you said;Which made it sound like Linux came up o.k. on the first boot, but not on the reboot.

If you can login as root, use the GUI - konquerer (??? - I think in KDE) to navigate to the grub.conf, and edit with something like kedit. Just right click on the filename and pick "edit with..."
Will avoid the CLI altogether, and save the risk of dropping into the real "vi" rather than "vim".
You wont like that ... ;)

grub edit from root and external USB situation
 

ok, looks like I was able to log on at boot as root. I did not notice that option the first few times I started up. I made and saved a basic edit (lengthened the default boot timeout) to the GRUB menu.lst file. I'll reboot and see if it worked. So that's how I get root permission I guess (well, one way ... as I'm sure there are other ways too).

USB External HD. I just plugged the thing in after booting Kanotix and it appeared as SDD1. I am pasting the results of fdisk -l just for reference.

hda1= PATA drive with WinXP/NTFS
hda2= not sure, but I think it was part for the Kanotix install
sda1= SATA drive with ~50% NTFS
sda2= SATA drive with the various *nix (Kanotix) partitions
sdd1= Ext USB drive with NTFS partition

................................................................................................
Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 9728 78140128+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 9729 9729 8032+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 7217 57970521 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 7218 9729 20177640 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdd: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 * 1 9728 78140128+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

....................................................................................................

What will happen now ? can I just reboot with the USB drive attached/powered up and will Kanotix recognize the drive now that it "saw it" once ? I guess I'll find out by trying it.

What I meant in the last post was that WinXP saw the USB drive without any difficulties. Kanotix, well GRUB actually, had the problem.

I am going to spend a bit of time on the printer issue today. I really feel as if I can't get printing to work this will not be a terribly useful install. Any ideas on getting the printer working ?

Thanks for your patient assistance

Paul



/dev/sdd1 * 1 9728 78140128+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
root@linuxbox:~#

heres my grub howto
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=237511

i do not have usb but its covered as well.
but I was mainly interested in those who want their bios to boot to usb b4 hard drive

if you merely want usb to copy files......mandrake allows you to just stick it in and I then click on its new icon on my desktop
others may have to change their /etc/fstab file but you need root powers