Two boot partitions- bad idea?

Seff · 01-05-2016, 11:59 AM

I'm not sure how this happened, but I have two partitions with a boot flag- sda1 on the Windows side, and sda5 on the Linux side. Is that bad housekeeping? I'd be willing to guess it's possible to get along with just one, so long as it has a boot manager that can start either Windows or Linux.

rknichols · 01-05-2016, 01:32 PM

The boot flag is relevant only on a primary partition, so get rid of the one on partition 5. To a Linux boot loader, the flag on partiton 1 doesn't matter either, but some BIOS implementations won't recognize the drive as a boot candidate if there is no primary partition with that flag set.

273 · 01-05-2016, 01:35 PM

The "bootable" flag is largely irrelevant. Just ensure that your bootloader of choice is the one which BIOS/EUFI points to.

Seff · 01-13-2016, 02:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 273

The "bootable" flag is largely irrelevant. Just ensure that your bootloader of choice is the one which BIOS/EUFI points to.

How do I do that, please?

beachboy2 · 01-13-2016, 02:57 PM

Seff,

One way is as follows.

Boot using your live usb/cd of Linux Mint.

Select “Try Linux Mint” and open Terminal.

Use boot-repair to fix the problem.

Run the following commands, one at a time, in terminal:

Code:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair && sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair

Use Recommended Repair then reboot.

Seff · 01-13-2016, 03:10 PM

Thanks. Unfortunately there's a problem. Here are the error messages I get after trying that first command:

Quote:

W: Failed to fetch cdrom://Linux Mint 17.2 _Rafaela_ - Release amd64 20150627/dists/trusty/contrib/binary-i386/Packages Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs

W: Failed to fetch cdrom://Linux Mint 17.2 _Rafaela_ - Release amd64 20150627/dists/trusty/main/binary-i386/Packages Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs

W: Failed to fetch cdrom://Linux Mint 17.2 _Rafaela_ - Release amd64 20150627/dists/trusty/non-free/binary-i386/Packages Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs

E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

beachboy2 · 01-13-2016, 04:15 PM

Seff,

Apologies. The commands have been updated.

Try:

Code:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/yannubuntu/boot-repair/ubuntu saucy main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list'

 sudo sh -c 'echo "deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/yannubuntu/boot-repair/ubuntu saucy main " >> /etc/apt/sources.list'

 sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 60D8DA0B

 sudo apt-get update

 sudo apt-get install boot-repair

Then run:

Code:

sudo boot-repair

Use Recommended Repair then reboot.

Seff · 01-13-2016, 04:55 PM

Not sure what's going on; when I copy-pasted your first command it just went back to the prompt.

Quote:

int@mint ~ $ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/yannubuntu/boot-repair/ubuntu saucy main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list'
mint@mint ~ $ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/yannubuntu/boot-repair/ubuntu saucy main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list'
mint@mint ~ $