I'm trying to set up a win2k/linux dual boot using 2 separate hard drives.

i have win 2k on one hard drive and have bought a second hard drive for linux.

my specific question is:

my second new hard drive is setup as a primary slave
can i install GRUB onto the /boot of the slave and get the dual boot option?

or does GRUB have to be installed on a master HD.

appreciate any help

No, if you want to dual boot you need to use the boot loader on the MBR.

thanks for the response.

however, i've read that installing a bootloader onto the Win2k MBR doesnt work because win2k "has to own the MBR".

am i mistaken?

what kind of partition do i need to create then on the master HD that has Win2k on it.

i've read that it is a "boot" or "root" partition but i'm not sure what it is.

Hi I have written a guide on dual booting linux with windows 2k/nt and xp and you can have a look at it with this link - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/lolmcbride/linxp.html
It uses LILO as the bootloader but it should work with grub as well as the principles are sound.

The references to a /boot partition on the master HD is news to me, or a /root, even stranger. Since the bootloader HAS to be in the masters MBR to dual boot, that does pose a good question as to whether or not win2k needs it's own private record or not. I've not heard that to be the case, and as i'm biased towards LILO, it should take care of business just fine. I don't know much about Grub outside of it being prettier. If you really aren't sure, install your bootloader to a floppy and boot off of that for linux and you won't have any worries. But I say go for the MBR...

Taz I know the idea of a boot or root partition is not known to everyone ( I didn't know you could boot from anywhere else till I had to on my new laptop which came with XP already installed).Never the less this does actually work and as far as I can make out booting from a location other than than the MBR is the ONLY way to get these two o/s's to work in harmony.

taz, what lolmc is doing is using the boot loader of w2k/nt/xp to dual boot. What you do is install lilo or grub into the boot sector of the root ' / ' or /boot ( if you have a separate boot partition ) partition. Then you make a copy of the boot sector using ' dd ' and you copy this into the root directory of w2k/nt/xp and edit w2k/nt/xp's boot loader program. This is explained here .

Nevermind me then...LOL I understand know what the question was. Thanks. I didn't know he wanted to use win2k's bootloader. Ahh well, it'll go into the memory bank upstairs..

Grub is called the grand unified bootloader because it will load anything.

I use it from a floppy, because WinME (eughh!) also doesn't like to share the MBR. I understand there is a version is for Free BSD which can be loaded onto the MBR (depnding on what else you're running) but I don't bother, because the bootloader is a very small program.

When you compile the program, you get a 7.4KB file called e2fs_stage1_5 and a menu.lst which it reads from which boots the compressed image. From switching on to unpacking the image it takes about 7 seconds.

Some kids just won't share whatever. Let them alone.

I had no problems with LILO on the MBR and now I am using GRUB on some machines, no problem there either.


win2k does not seem to care one way or the other.
as long as windows is installed before you install linux it should be able to boot.

This is the point I was trying to make...You don't need any special /boot partitions with win2k. But alas, until i do it myself, i'll keep the piehole shut...

this is all you need for grub to boot win2k

title Windows 2000
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

Ooops, am I right in thinking that win2K uses a FAT32 filesystem and not NTFS as NT and XP use?If this is the case then I may have led people up the garden path as the method I have been referring to is only necessary if NTFS is the windows filesystem used as Linux does not as yet recognise NTFS and cannot read or write files to this filesystem.It is possible to pass data between them but you have to use a FAT32 partition as a swap area as both NTFS and Linux can read and write to FAT32 filesystems.

FAT32 is not a problem so putting LILO or GRUB on the MBR of the HD is perfectly alright - I will amend my "so-called" help file to reflect this and my apologies to anyone if I muddied the water somewhat.
I also promise to research more thoroughly,be nice to children and small animals and seek world peace through Linux - NOT!

Sorry.

Linux can read NTFS but writing to it is experimental and you have to compile it into your kernel to get it working, not recomended by anyone. Win can read linux ext2 with the help of explore2fs but writing is not supported. Both win2k and XP can use fat32 but it slows them down, I don't know about NT4 but as win2k is really NT5 and XP is NT6 then I expext 4 can as well.

thanks for all the helpful replies. especially the ones with the links to webpages devoted to this common linux challenge.

i got the dual boot to work great and it was much less painful than anticipated.

as outlined in the above replies, i ended up installing the Grub boot loader on the /boot partition of the slave hard drive i installed linux on (hdb1).

then, using the instructions given by LOLMC and LINUXCOOL
to copy the sectors of the linux \boot partition onto the windows 2000 \root directory (C:\) and then modify the win 2000 boot.ini.

thanks all.
i was afraid i would end up trashing one or both of my hard drives.

----

i have ended up with a new issue, however.
i think i ended up installing linux without a SWAP file.
all i see is hdb1 and hdb2.

if this is so, what is the most painless way of adding a SWAP file? short of reinstalling (took forever off ftp) and buying partition magic. is there a way?

again appreciate all the advice.