Hi

Tried to reinstall winblows- severe errors and so forth operating- and it killed my grub boot.ini bootloader thing. So how do I edit the boot.ini in such a way to specificy to boot linux?

Never done it myself, but I think you have to create a boot.lin file - might help you googling.

Best,

Samsara

So you are trying to boot linux, I am guessing you did not make a boot disk. Can't the first install cd be used to boot some distibutions of linux?

You have to boot the system into linux using the boot disk. Other wise, you have to boot into emergency mode using the first installation cd, and then rectify the MBR. Also, use lilo or grub as the boot manager as it is more flexible and you can boot into windows too, from them.

Ok,
I'm gonna try the first RH9 cd and see what happens!
Thaks for all the help, I'll let you know (hopefully from linux) how it worked out!

Jim

Ok
so here's the new problem.

I did the linux rescue thing with the first RH9 cd and ran grub.
before i ran grub i less'ed the /boot/grub/grub.conf and saw where my normal stuff was pointing at what.
in grub i did a root (hd1,4) and it was all good.
then i did a setup (hd0,0) and apaprently it too was all good.
now when the machine reboots, grub shows up and i can pick between supposed linux and "dos" (windows xp) but when i pick dos, it goes back into grub....

i REALLY need to be able to run both, linux and xp and it *WAS* all working until ()*&ING windows screwed itself up so that I had to reinstall and hence my problem.

Please help!!

Jim

Are you able to run the command fdisk -l frome rescue mode. This command will show your current partitions. If you can, print the results along with your grub.conf file. I would be happy to take a look.

Hi there!

So this is my grub.conf (/boot/grub/grub.conf)

#grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd1,4)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hdb5
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd1,4)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-20.9)
root (hd1,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-20.9 ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-20.9.img
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-8)
root (hd1,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img
title DOS
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

I'm in linux right now, and I'm compiling ardour, is there a way to get parition info outside of df via commandline or will i have to reboot?

Thanks alot!

Jim

I am still a little lost. You are able to use grub to boot linux, but not windows?

Do you have windows on one harddrive and linux on an other?

You can get partition info with the command line using the command /sbin/fdisk -l as root

Hi

Yeah, I have two HDs, my first one which has windows on it and the second one which has linux and 2 windows partitions on it for my windows use.

here is my fdisk info:

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40027029504 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4866 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 4866 39086113+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)

Disk /dev/hdb: 80.0 GB, 80054059008 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9732 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 1964 15775798+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hdb2 1965 9731 62388427+ f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5 1965 2728 6136798+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb6 2729 2791 506016 82 Linux swap
/dev/hdb7 2792 3824 8297541 83 Linux
/dev/hdb8 3825 9731 47447946 b Win95 FAT32

The problem was this: I tried to reinstall windows and it wrecked my grub bootloader. So, i managed to linux rescue my way in and save the linux boot, but now I can't boot into windows!

hey,

I am very new at this, I thought that I might see somthing obviusly wrong(I did not). You might get lucky installing lilo. It has been around longer then grub and is reliable.

make a boot disk with the command as root
#/sbin/mkbootdisk 2.4.20-20.9

then type in the command as root
#lilo
This will rewrite lilo on you mbr over grub. If it doesn't work you can reinstall grub. No harm in trying.

with this command you can reinstall grub (as root)
#grub-install /dev/hda

those commands would be
/sbin/lilo
/sbin/grub-install

Couldn't I just reinstall grub anyways by running /sbin/grub-install?

ya that would reinstall it. let me know if it works. Make a boot cd if anything goes wrong

When I had RH7.3 and Win98/ME on my computer, I had problems with grub. I ended up figuring out how to fix it, I had to activate the Windows partition or something... I forget what I had to do. Anywho, I ended up taking Windows off(It worked fine enough for everything I used it for, except when I wanted to download, it capped the total downstream bandwidth at 15kb/s or something. With Slack I get over 250, and I'm on a crappy 200mhz cpu system....

all I remember was some command like "makenoverify" or something like that, I'm sure the 'noverify' was in there, not sure about the 'make' part, though....