new to linux and encountering installation problems
 

i am attempting to install mandriva 2006 on a sata raid 0array. i also have windows xp installed on this drive. i create a root partition, swap, and /home. when asked where to put grub i have several options: the windows partition, root, swap, or home. i put it in the windows partition and when i reboot grub runs, but will not load linux. it will however load windows. furthermore, i can't even rewrite the boot sector to no longer run grub. i have tried loading the windows cd and and running "fixboot c:" , "fixmbr", and "bootcfg /rebuild". none of those attempts worked. it still boots grub. is there at least some way to change the boot priority in grub. i would like to have linux work, but failing that i at least want to get rid of grub.

please help me!!!

when grub appears try typing 'c' to bypass grub.

if this works....and you have a grub prompt
you can try too boot into madriva manually.
try the following:
if this works you will need to edit the file /boot/grub/menu.lst to fix grub

there is some good notes here
http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/in...ST&f=14&t=5025
or in the grub manual
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html

good luck :)

Something's wrong here...
Putting grub on root, swap, or home makes absolutely no sense. The two most common options for where to put grub would be the mbr on the first drive, or on a floppy.

If you did a fixmbr using the Windows CD--and still get grub on bootup, then it may be something to do with the boot order.

Is everything on the raid array? When you installed Linux, did it see the raid array? What is your partitioning setup?

thanks for the responses. in response to derob grub will begin to boot linux, but it fails during the boot sequence so i'm not sure that manually booting the os would be the answer although i will give it a try a lil later just to be sure. w/ regard to pixellany when i was given the option of where to put grub i was given other ide hard drives which have no os installed, or the raid array position 0, 5,6,or 7. 5,6,& 7 of course being the root, swap, and home respectively. so i installed it to the 0 partition. if this was in error please let me know. also, linux did detect and install to the raid array. hope this information helps you help me.

I don't know what is meant by "raid array position 0,5,6,or 7". If a RAID array is detected during install, it should be detected as one drive. On that drive, you would then create partitions. Since you talk about root, swap, and home, I suspect that you are talking about partitions.
It is incomprehensible to me that the installer would ask if you wanted to put grub on---eg--the swap space.
Again, grub normally goes in the mbr or on a floppy---did you have those choices?

Can you boot up from a live CD of some sort and verify what partitions you have?

All else aside, the first thing I would do if a solution was not found quickly would be to get rid of the RAID. That eliminates a big variable. Depending on what drives you have, I recommend OSes and apps one one drive, and then a big FAT32 partition on another drive for shared data.

thanks again for the help pixellany. the raid array is detected as a single drive and i was referring to partitions. the options given to me for grub were :

/dev/hdb
/dev/mapper/sil_agaedicfagbg
/dev/mapper/sil_agaedicfagbg5
/dev/mapper/sil_agaedicfagbg6
/dev/mapper/sil_agaedicfagbg7
/dev/fd0

the dev/hdb i assum is my ide drive which has files for windows but no os, i boot from the raid, which is the next 4 entries. initially i put grub in the second option listed. grub loads fine when hard disk is selected as first boot device but when i attempt to load linux i recieve this error:

kernel panic - not syncing : no init found

i really want to get this to work so i look forward to yours as well as anybody else's assistance.

thanks

Grub is working correctly
 

Here are some things you want to know. Grub is in the MBR. This means grub will come up first thing. If you don't want grub in the MBR, you tell the linux install not to put grub in the MBR. Then you can use the MS Windows boot loader to boot. You need to add a line to c:\boot.ini, at the end of the file, and all you do is change the partition number, the title, and the path to: \boot\grub. Evertything else stays the same. You use the last line in boot.ini as a template, and create a new last line with clipboard, then make the changes to the copied line.

The message you are getting means initrd is loading, but when it tryies to find init, which is a file, and the mother of all linux processes, it can't find it. That means the drive specification for where linux is is wrong.

Here is what a /boot/grub/menu.lst entry looks like:

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.820050831
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.820050831 root=/dev/sda1 ro acpi=off
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.820050831
savedefault
boot

Debian stuff works pretty well for testing. It is pretty standard linux. At the grub prompt, type root and then TAB. All the possible partitions will be listed and you pick the one that contains /boot. Type kernel TAB, and all the possible kernels will come up. Pick the right one and type it in there. But, in the kernel statement there is a root option. That is the partition that contains /sbin. /sbin is where init is. You might want ro to load the kernel read only, and you may or may not need acpi=off. That all goes on the kernel statement. Type initrd TAB, all your possible initrd files will come up. Type the one that matches your kernel. Everything will be the same, except kernel will say initrd. You usually don't need savedefault or boot, but if you can get it to work try putting your root partition i.e. /dev/partition in the boot statement. The press b. It should boot now, and you can fix /boot/grub/menu.lst to reflect the temporary values you used to boot linux permanently.