hey guys, great forum. My linux box -dual PII 400mhz on p2bd mobo, with an lsiu160 scsi card and opticals on a adaptec 2940uw. ok...i have three ide hd's..hda has redhat 9.0 with grub loaded and it boots fine....no primary slave...hdc is a windows partition fat32 for files ...hdd is the drive i am trying to load mandrake 8.2 on with not success. Just a note...sda has windows2k on it and sdb is SuSe 9.0 and the bootloader for suse is on a floppy..i can change the mobo bios option and either boot ide or scsi and all works fine. My problem is when loading mandrake to hdd's partition and putting lilo or grub on a floppy for it to boot from. i either got nothing in grub except a boot into redhat on hda or a screen full of scrolling 4040404040404040404's with lilo. Can i load the bootloader to floppy for hdd even though i have grub for redhat on the mbr or is that impossible. If it is impossilble, what is the simplest way to get mandrake to boot...i am also going to add suse 9.1 to the same drive as soon as i can figure this problem out. Remember i'm a complete newbie...i don't even know how to edit files yet....so be gentle thanks...hdd is partioned / 1gb, /home 12gb,/usr 10gb /swap 1.2gb

Add a new entry to grub.conf on your redhat system something like below:


title Mandrake Linux
root (hd3,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img

ok, but how do i do that. i'm on redhat now, what do i do? And once i know how to add that do i type it exactly that way? Help me out please...thanks

if your in a gui, try gedit or kedit from the console like this:

su

gedit /etc/grub.conf

or

kedit /etc/grub.conf

I'd suggest reading the grub manual as well.

man grub #from console

The values i gave you were guesses based on what you said they may be different to those, so you really need to do a fdisk -l /dev/hdd and see which partition mandrake / is mounted as (most likely hdd1 or 3,0 in grub). But do your research and post back if your worried. The info provided by fdisk will allow us to give you the exact details u need for grub.

vOOdOO101,
i really really appreciate your assistance. I will do a read of the man today. I'll probably try to reinstall as well, my main concern is editing the mbr and lossing my ability to boot to redhat 9.0. I will indeed let you know how it goes and thanks a million for pointing me in the right direction.

trinity30033@linux:~> fdisk -l /dev/hdd
bash: fdisk: command not found
trinity30033@linux:~> su
Password:
linux:/home/trinity30033 # fdisk -l /dev/hdd

Disk /dev/hdd: 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/hdd1 * 1 135 1084356 83 Linux
/dev/hdd2 136 9729 77063805 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdd5 136 1417 10297633+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdd6 2920 4962 16410366 b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hdd7 4963 7005 16410366 b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hdd8 7006 9729 21880498+ b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hdd9 2785 2919 1084356 82 Linux swap
/dev/hdd10 1418 2784 10980396 83 Linux
ok, there ya go...that's the fdisk output. Weird huh? hdd2 comes as a surprise you me, repartion reformat might be in order right?

That is a lilo read out isn't it. I have grub on the mbr so they can coexist right? I'll need to reinstall ...am i correct?

See I find you are doing it a little wired, having to change the boot drive in the bios to get some of the other OSs to boot is just to much work (simple is better). So just pick a drive to boot off of, your redhat one or whatever and redo the grub config so that it can boot any OS that you have on any of your hard drives, you won't need any more floppies or anything. But hey you don't have to listen to me it might be a little to much work as well.

As for your fdisk listing, there are a lot of partitions on that drive I am not sure about.

title Mandrake Linux
root (hd3,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img

or

title Mandrake Linux
root (hd3,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img

As for lilo and grub, well all that will happen is one bootloader will go to the next.

OT: can be done to create a loop if your into that sort of thing (ntldr calls lilo that calls grub that calls ntldr), but it be silliness to amuse oneself when bored.

Gentlemen we have lift off.....Houston, that's a go, all systems functioning properly, hda redhat, hdc windows storage, hdd1 mandrake 8.2, hdd2 suse 9.1, and i couldn't be happier, thanks so much for all the suggestions. I did a reinstall and placed grub on a floppy and it worked this time. I think there may have been a bad partion somewhere, but its all good now. Will be transferring the grub to the mbr when i get the nerve...now i can breathe....thanks