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Old 05-29-2006, 06:21 AM   #1
Soup Erman
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Partition problems, trying to set up dual boot, FC5/XP


OK! Well I was having problems getting both O/S's to be bootable at the same time, and then I read somewhere that I need to have the /boot partition on the same physical disk as the MBR. Before I had them on seperate disks. So I have two hard disks, the first (hda) has my XP installation (and the MBR), the second (hdb) is where I want to install FC5.

So, I open up partition magic, and set up an unallocated 100MB partition on hda, at the front of the disk, before the Windows XP. It tells me I need to restart, so I do and it sets up the new partition. It takes a while, good 45 minutes, as it has to move the Windows Partition forward 100MB. When its done I go back to partition magic to check that everything is alright, and it is. I now have a 100MB unallocated partition on hda for the /boot partition and the unallocated partition on hdb for FC5.

So, I chuck in the FC5 install dvd, restart and set up the installation options, click next to install and I get an exception message pop up. I didn't take a note of it, but I probably should have, the error log was quite big. So I click ok and it shuts down the installation and tells me its ok to restat my computer.

I load up partition magic again and I get something very strange, which I took a screenie of: http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/4...rtition6kk.jpg

The partition is labelled BAD, and I can't do anything to it bar 'format' and 'set active'. It seems to be working though as Windows loads fine. If anyone knows how I can fix it that would be appreciated.
 
Old 05-29-2006, 09:57 AM   #2
Agrouf
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Hello,
Which filesystem did you use to format /boot?
 
Old 05-29-2006, 11:08 AM   #3
JimBass
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At this point it probably doesn't matter, but you do not need to have boot on the same drive as the MBR. It's fine if you do, fine if you don't. All that is important is if you put the linux OS on a second disk, then you need to make sure when grub/lilo is being installed that it installs it to the MBR of the first disk. That way when the computer goes through BIOS it (usually) tries the CDRom first, then when it fails to boot it passes on to the hard disks. At that point the first thing it hits is the MBR on the first disk, which will direct it to /boot on the first or second drive. From boot it reads the grub/lilo info, and either boots the selected linux, or it gets sent back to the first drive to boot windows.

Since you created the free space on the main drive, you can put /boot there if you want. You just have to install /boot into that space on the first drive, and everything else into the second drive. It should work, or you can just reinstall grub/lilo, and direct it to the MBR of disk 1.

Peace,
JimBass
 
Old 05-29-2006, 02:31 PM   #4
theNbomr
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What I like to do is install Windows on it's own drive, with no existing Linux. Then make the Windows disk the 'second' drive, and the Linux drive the 'first' drive (swapping jumpers on the drive &/or making BIOS changes). Then, in the grub config for the Windows entry, put:

Code:
title Windows XP
        rootnoverify (hd1,0)
        map (hd0) (hd1)
        map (hd1) (hd0)
        chainloader +1
Done this way, the Windows disk is cabable of running stand-alone, and it doesn't foul up the MBR on the linux disk.
Some (many, most?) Linux install systems seem to get this right on their own.

--- rod.
 
Old 05-29-2006, 08:40 PM   #5
Soup Erman
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Registered: May 2006
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Agrouf
Hello,
Which filesystem did you use to format /boot?
it was an unformatted partition, which was going to be formatted as ext3 upon install of FC5

Now I still need to know how to get my windows partition back to normal, ie not labelled as BAD but NTFS with the extra 100MB partition to be used as /boot so I can try install FC5 again.

Cheers
 
  


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