dear all, I have a win2003 system, I had a blank partition left. so installed Fedora core 6 onto it. When it asked for the boot loader then i said that it should be installed on the boot sector of the hdd instead of the MBR. Now when i booted the machine then it directly went onto the win2003, it didnt even show the grub menu...neither did it show the choice for Linux and Windows, I had given the default partition to boot as the windows one....but at least it should show the choice for Linux as well....in fact it did not even show the GRUB screen...
Can you please tell me what is to be done??

regards,
kanishk

did it say press so and so to enter grub menu

hi friend,

you have to install your linux on MBR if you want to boot both linux and win2003.

Indeed. Fedora should have a rescue mode from the CD that will allow you to correct this.

do i have to install FC6 all over again?? Is it neccasary to install the GRUB on the MBR only??

Is it possible to use the rescue CD and just re-install the grub??

Normally, GRUB just goes in the mbr. If you put it in the boot sector of the Linux partition, then you still need to do something to let the first bootloader find it. (Let's save that for later)

As already stated, you should be able to use the install CD to fix the issue. One way or another, you need to get to a command-line (terminal). If it is a live CD, just let it boot up and then open a terminal. If it is not a live CD, then ctrl-alt-F1 should get you to a command line.

Once you are in a terminal......
To install grub to the mbr:
(I'm assuming that Windows is on hda1 (or sda1), and Linux /boot is on hda2 (or sda2))
grub (starts the grub shell)
root (hd0,1) (tells grub where /boot is)
setup (hd0) (installs grub to the mbr)

Note the difference in how grub numbers things:
hd0,1 = hda2 (or sda2)
hd0 = hda or sda
etc.

i have a rescue cd, then i can boot from it and reinstall grub?? i hope reinstalling grub wont bring my entire system down?? because it is an office computer....

Yes I think it is possible without any damage to your system. The grub,as far as I know, reads that there is windows too and stores it as one of the different options to boot. However, I am also a newbie and don't rely on me 100%.

What kind of Rescue CD?? We have told you about using the Linux install CD in rescue mode--is that what you mean?

Installing GRUB per my instructions affects only the mbr. This said, it is always advisable to have everything backed up before making any changes.

I heard you can reinstall grub with KNOPPIX

dear sir, i am using fedora core 6...it has 5 installation cd's and the sixth cd is a rescue cd....i can boot with a rescue cd then i can give the command: linux rescue
then it mounts the image on /mnt/sysimage

backing up the entire windows seems too difficult....but reinstalling grub again would be a good idea but suppose it brings my windows2003 partition down then i would be in big trouble....

So unless there is 100% gaurantee about the sucess of the process there would be no use of reinstalling grub ...in fact it would be better to install linux again from scratch with the grub this time in MBR...

what are your views??

regards,
kanishk

Yes it is, only download the follow CD image en burn it, I will recommend you that burn it in a CD-RW because the ISO file size is 10MB approx.

I hope this help you!

The suggestion was only to backup critical data.
Big trouble why? No Windows install disk, e.g.?
If you have no way of re-installing Windows, then you are indeed asking for trouble.
How do you think that re-installing Fedora AND putting grub in the mbr is lower risk than simply putting grub in the mbr??

STOP! This is an office computer? Do you have permission to do this? AAAHHHGGGHHH!
Get TrueImage. Pay for it. Worth the money. Read all of the directions and use the program before doing anything more.
You don't really seem to understand about partitions and boot records.

If I was in IT at your company, and you called me after thrashing your MBR with an illegal install of software, I would lobby heavily for your personal destruction.
I would do my utmost to "make an example" out of you.
I wouldn't just "throw you under the bus"; I would drive the bus back-and-forth over your crushed, mangled, and mutilated body--then I would have your remains "plasticised" and mounted as "art" in the employee break room.
Then, I would use the install media for windows, boot into the recovery console and fix the MBR. (Ten minutes.)
Your milage may vary.

After making an Image of the Drive; which would include all of your files, partition table, your install of Linux, and the original MBR; then install Grub to the master boot record of the hard drive. There is no reason what-so-ever to reinstall Linux. There is usually a script for making a Grub boot floppy (grub-floppy), which will give you a grub command-line, located in Recovery Is Possible, and I think in knoppix, and it also used to be part of the recovery console in the first disc of any RedHat distro disk number 1 "linux rescue" is the boot command.
At the grub console if you are trying to boot Linux located in the second primary partition:
_ root=(hd0,1) \<enter>
>kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 ro \<enter>
>initrd /initrd-full-name \<enter>
>boot <enter>

This of course depends upon the symlinks set up during the installation of your distro. Some, like mine, aren't symlinked at all, and the full kernel name and full-name-of-initrd must be called. And, in my case, the kernel and all of the other stuff (for debian) resides in the /boot directory of linux "/"; so the kernel command from the grub console would be: kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.xxK7 root=/dev/hdc2 ro. The initrd entry would be: initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.xxK7. As I have other distros installed the /boot directory has separate directories for EACH Linux installation (debian as the default, which could also be moved to it's own directory for cleanliness.)

Example: [Entries from /boot/grub/menu.lst]

title Slackware Linux, kernel vmlinuz-ide-2.4.31
root (hd0,1)
kernel /slack/vmlinuz-ide-2.4.31 root=/dev/hde1 ro
savedefault
boot

title Slackware Linux, Kernel k7-2.6.18
root (hd0,1)
kernel /slack/bzImage-k7-2.6.18 root=/dev/hde1 ro
savedefault
boot
##Note that the bzImage.etc will boot even though it isn't called vmlinuz.
##Slack, in my case, doesn't have an initrd--so there isn't reason to have an entry for it.

title Slackware Linux, Kernel vmlinuz-2.6.18new
root (hd0,1)
kernel /slack/vmlinuz-2.6.18new root=/dev/hde1 ro
boot

title Puppy Linux (on /dev/hde5)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /Puppy/vmlinuz root=/dev/hde5 ro
initrd /Puppy/zdrv_214.sfs
boot

##Whoo-Hoo! a hard drive install of Puppy Linux!

"title" entry aside; the entries in /boot/grub/menu.lst are exactly as you would enter on to the command line/console of a grub boot floppy disk.


The grub console will allow searching as well.

While it is possible to assign the target "/" and hard drive MBR from the commandline "grub-install" script from "linux rescue", Knoppix, Recovery Is Possible, and other live Linux CD distros, it is really easy to mis-interpret the instructions and keep screwing things up.

It is best to boot into the default Linux distro using a grub boot floppy and run grub from the installation itself until you are really familiar with things. Then, only run grub once. When compiling a new kernel use grub-update--if the "make install" script doesn't call it for you. Installations of additional distros involve sharing the /boot directory of the original installation of Linux, with the kernels and initrd files being located within their own directories on this shared boot to avoid confusion and really whacked out names to keep things identified.

To avoid problems: The MBR of the first Hard drive should be used, and the "/boot" (whether as part of a "/" root partition or as a partition which is separate and mounted) should be located in the second partition of the first hard drive. A "SiS" chipset will refuse to even try to boot a second drive if the first drive has a partition labelled as *active or *boot (Windows.) VIA and Intel will try most of the time. (**When I changed my Motherboard, I got a "SiS" chipset based one and had to put a "/boot" partition on the first hard drive in order to boot the other drives.)

Look for the grub documentation on the web--but read several guides and tutorials to really get a grasp on grub. I don't know why, but it seems excruciatingly hard in the beginning to understand. After you "get" it, you don't understand why it was so hard to grasp in the beginning.

Eqwatz

frankly speaking i have the permission to install fedora core 6 on my system.....but its upto me to really take care of my own system.....and if something goes wrong then no one is going to help me with my lost data and getting my system up....and i already have a database running on the win2003 partition....

What i was really looking at was using the windows boot loader to show a choice to boot into linux....

For that i guess i will have to do some editing in windows boot.ini file not the linux grub.conf....

I know about the boot.ini file in windows and i have set the pointer to the linux partition...just tell me that Linux boot's from the "/" or the "/boot" partition...??

But for the pointer to really read the linux partition there must be a sort of connecting medium between windows and linux....sopmething that understands the language of winOS and LinuxOS

regards,
kanishk