GRUB-settings: are they permanent?

JZL240I-U · 10-11-2005, 04:11 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by aus9
...
I wanted to give both GRUB and the ntldr "symmetrical" capabilities, i.e. both being able to start either the other loader or DOS.
...
either
grub in mbr jumps to its bootling files and if menu has MS grub chainloads or jumps to the booting files for MS be it ntldr.exe or something else

or
ntldr in mbr jumps to its bootting files and if boot.ini has a reference it chainloads to the grub booting files on the linux partition.

that is, you can only have one bootloader in the mbr at a time.

Understood. That is not the "symmetry" I meant, I was referring to DOS. Read again:

"I wanted to give both GRUB and the ntldr "symmetrical" capabilities, i.e. both being able to start either the other loader or DOS.

What you described above was (for the NT-loader) and is (for GRUB) both working on my machine. But DOS can only be started by the NT-loader. I tried GRUB to be able to kick DOS off, too, without first resorting to chainloading the NT-loader, which, in turn, then can start DOS.

Sorry that I didn't express myself more clear.

Quote:

Originally posted by aus9
...However, if I misunderstood, both can chainload but I have already covered that in my signature ok?

You have

.

Thanks

.

aus9 · 10-11-2005, 08:09 AM

Lets try again do you mean???
your grub is in mbr and grub can chainload to the nt bootloader which has an entry for DOS
but your attempt for grub to chainload to dos fails?

To help my confusion based on your map dos/ NT/ linux you mention /dev/hdb is there something we need to know?

What I hope syg00 was suggesting was that MS has a terrible habit of putting stuff in hidden sectors of the first drive first partition which is where DOS likes to find some booting code, and did not because NT was installed after dos.

And we are back to original questions......sorry....can you post your /boot/grub/menu.lst or grub.conf file for us to have a peek at or do you still fail to get into linux?

and since I am free to give advice, advice you can feel free to ignore, heh heh, do you still need dos ....does it stand for a windows system or true dos like dos 6.2? just curious.....in the long run I think you may see that we prefer you use the most up-todate software either MS or Linux as its best for all concerned......unless of course you do not use the internet for dos.

JZL240I-U · 10-11-2005, 08:42 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by aus9
Lets try again do you mean???

By all means ...

Quote:

Originally posted by aus9
your grub is in mbr and grub can chainload to the nt bootloader which has an entry for DOS
but your attempt for grub to chainload to dos fails?

Yesss, exactly.

Quote:

Originally posted by aus9
To help my confusion based on your map dos/ NT/ linux you mention /dev/hdb is there something we need to know?

Not really.

Quote:

Originally posted by aus9
What I hope syg00 was suggesting was that MS has a terrible habit of putting stuff in hidden sectors of the first drive first partition which is where DOS likes to find some booting code, and did not because NT was installed after dos.

That's succinctly put

.

Quote:

Originally posted by aus9
And we are back to original questions......sorry....can you post your /boot/grub/menu.lst or grub.conf file for us to have a peek at or do you still fail to get into linux?

From my thread-starting post I'll gladly repeat

"I recently tried a stanza in /boot/grub/menu.lst from the GRUB manual:

Code:

     ....
     unhide (hd0,0)
     hide (hd0,1)
     rootnoverify (hd0,0)
     chainloader +1
     makeactive
     ....

If you need it all I'll have to get it tonight, currently I'm out of reach of my home-box. Btw. are you on night shift or doing a late session at home before bed? Should be dead in the night in Australia I'd think...

System layout is:

/dev/hda1 = C: -> DOS
/dev/hda2 = D: -> NT
/dev/hdb3 = /boot -> GRUB
/dev/hdb5 = /

Since it seems to have been a hardware fault I can get back into the system.

Quote:

Originally posted by aus9
and since I am free to give advice, advice you can feel free to ignore, heh heh, do you still need dos ....does it stand for a windows system or true dos like dos 6.2? just curious.....in the long run I think you may see that we prefer you use the most up-todate software either MS or Linux as its best for all concerned......unless of course you do not use the internet for dos.

No, I don't really need DOS (my wife did until shortly for an application). Yes, it is DOS 6.22 and Win-NT (see system layout above).

My most up to date system will be shortly OpenSuSE. I didn't buy any Microsoft things since DOS and NT and I don't plan to in the future, I think they are overpriced. I did buy some SuSEs, though.

Again, the reason I do this is simply to learn, I like to know how things work, even when I'm not acually using them (anymore).

aus9 · 10-11-2005, 10:07 PM

fair enough.....

maybe you could do a post at google/groups or a MS forum to see if there is a way of leaving boot codes in their respective partitions instead of using a bit of hidden sector.

these links may help but I am no MS expert

http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm
http://www.nick.rozanski.com/multboot.htm
http://www.bcpl.net/~dbryan/directboot.html

LQ currently shows my time as GMT +8 but believes I am already on daylight saving and um as we all know cows need more sleep so in my state we do not yet have DS (joke)

JZL240I-U · 10-12-2005, 02:26 AM

Thanks for the links and an instructive thread. Just to finish things off, here is my menu.lst:

Code:

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Thu Oct  6 21:22:51 2005

color white/blue black/light-gray
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd1,2)/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Linux
    kernel (hd1,2)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb5 vga=0x31a splash=silent 
desktop hdd=ide-scsi hddlun=0 showopts
    initrd (hd1,2)/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: WinNT / MS-DOS###
title WinNT / MS-DOS
    root (hd0,0)
    chainloader +1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: MS-DOS directly###
title MS-DOS directly
     unhide (hd0,0)
     hide (hd0,1)
     rootnoverify (hd0,0)
     chainloader +1
     makeactive 

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: floppy###
title Diskette
    root (fd0)
    chainloader +1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe
    kernel (hd1,2)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb5 showopts ide=nodma apm=off 
acpi=off vga=normal nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 3
    initrd (hd1,2)/initrd

GMT +8 would be middle european summertime +8. When I once flew to Sydney it was 11 hours difference, thus you're from the parts I didn't come to: western Australia

.

aus9 · 10-13-2005, 02:57 AM

just a thought based on any rebuild you care to do, you have 2 drives (at least) therefore 2 mbrs to play with.

If dos is no longer important......my suggestion is to learn dos stuff is this

1) disable drive 1 in bios and install dos into drive 2 overwriting linux and putting dos bootloader into mbr 2 with all of its glory

2) reboot and test dos can boot?

3) re-enable drive 1 and install NT to drive 1 and re-configure NT booter for dos on drive 2

4) install linux on drive 2 with re-linked to its new destination still likely to be /boot hdb3 and root hdb5 and overwrite grub to drive 1 mbr replacing ntldr so

drive 1 Part 1 NT mbr is grub
drive 2 Part 1 DOS mbr is dos
drive 2 Part 2 /boot
.............P3 / etc

5) Now if I am right heh heh you play with your dos bootloader in grub by a chainloader command that you put into your menu

title dos
hide (hd0,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

which is to trick dos into thinking its on the first drive but makes sure it writes to the correct drive

I am going away for a week so may not answer for awhile good luck

JZL240I-U · 10-13-2005, 03:06 AM

Yep. That looks like the solution, great

. As you rightly noted, the MBR of /dev/hdb is not doing anything useful rigtht now, so why don't I change that

.

At least this is a logical setup, though I don't know when (or even whether) I can try it out (like I said it is our productive machine), but I'm really glad this found an elegant solution.

Have a nice trip / holiday and many thanks for your help.

<edit> december 5th 2005
Okay, it works for DOS just like you suggested. I did kick out WinNT, though, and replaced it by FreeBSD 6.0

, everything boots just fine now, though I didn't play with the BSD-loader yet ...