Tri Boot with GRUB: SUSE 9.2, Win 98 and WinNT 4.0

pwakeford · 05-28-2005, 07:36 PM

I've recently installed Suse 9.2 to an old Win32 machine, dual booting with Win98 and WinNT 4.0 using the NT boot loader to switch between OSes on startup.

Now that I've installed Suse and it's using the GRUB boot loader, I can only access SUSE and the Win98 partition. How do I correct GRUB to allow it to boot WinNT as well?

Here is partition setup from df:
Filesystem Type 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda7 reiserfs 3855428 2711248 1144180 71% /
tmpfs tmpfs 63084 28 63056 1% /dev/shm
/dev/hdb6 reiserfs 3172696 400284 2772412 13% /opt
/dev/hda1 vfat 160444 124068 36376 78% /windows/C (Win98)
/dev/hdb1 ntfs 4192932 1311136 2881796 32% /windows/D (WinNT)
/dev/hda5 vfat 3912168 810524 3101644 21% /windows/ (Win98)
/dev/hdb5 ntfs 12185268 580264 11605004 5% /windows/F (WinNT)

Here is my /boot/grub/menu.lst:

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Sun May 29 01:22:51 2005

color white/blue black/light-gray
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,6)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE LINUX 9.2
kernel (hd0,6)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7 vga=0x317 selinux=0 splash=silent
resume=/dev/hda6 desktop elevator=as showopts
initrd (hd0,6)/boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- SUSE LINUX 9.2
kernel (hd0,6)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=o
ff vga=normal noresume selinux=0 barrier=off nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 3
initrd (hd0,6)/boot/initrd

damantis · 05-28-2005, 07:56 PM

GRUB's naming system is a bit different. Instead of /dev/hda1, it's (hd0,0). The numbers start from 0, not 1.

/dev/hda = (hd0)
/dev/hdb = (hd1)
/dev/hdc = (hd2)

Similarly,
/dev/hda1 = (hd0,0)
/dev/hda2 = (hd0,1)
/dev/hdb3 = (hd1, 2)

To boot from /dev/hdb1, add this to your /boot/grub/menu.lst

Code:

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows
    root (hd1,0)
    chainloader +1

To boot from /dev/hdb5, use this.

Code:

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows
    root (hd1,4)
    chainloader +1

pwakeford · 05-29-2005, 12:04 PM

Hi damantis thanks for getting back to me.

I tried the changes you suggested to my /boot/grub/menu.lst, but now when I try boot up in WinNT 4, it has the following lines on a black screen, but never moves past this point:

root (hd1,0)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
chainloader +1

I get a similar message when I try boot hd1,4

/dev/hdb1 (hd1,0) is where WinNT 4 should boot from. I was thinking that I had to get GRUB to invoke the NT boot loader on /dev/hda1 since that is where NT 4.0 installed it before I installed SuSE.
Is this possible to do in GRUB at all? Specifiy the boot loader for the NT 4 option on the splash menu?

power_pole · 05-29-2005, 04:34 PM

if you are going to boot windows from a different hard drive you need to add these lines to /boot/grub/menu.lst

Code:

map(hd0) (hd1)
map(hd1) (hd0)

that is if the nt bootloader is on the second drive

pwakeford · 05-29-2005, 06:26 PM

Nevermind you guys thanks for the suggestions. I've solved the "problem". In my windows boot.ini file I had set the delay for the boot menu options to 1 second and was never seeing the boot menu for windows, b/c it was booting within a second after being relayed from GRUB's splash screen. ;-)

All is well.

archtoad6 · 06-05-2005, 09:36 AM

If you would like to see your df output nicely sorted, try:

Code:

df  | grep ^F ;  df  | grep -v  ^F  | sort -nk1.9  | sort -sk1.8,1.8

Code:

df  | grep ^F ;  df  | grep ^/      | sort -nk1.9  | sort -sk1.8,1.8

(No flames about the spaces added for legibility, please.)
#1 shows all filesystems
#2 shows only "regular" filesystems
Both put the header at the top

They are long but aliasable.

They work for me on MEPIS, YMMV

galliar · 06-06-2005, 06:27 AM

I don't normally recommend the easy way out, but with FreeBSD you have some booting issues that are very difficult to get around. You can download a public domain boot loader called Gag, http://gag.sourceforge.net It recognizes many different boot partition types in a very simple fashion. I think you will be quite pleased with the simplicity. Unless you fully want to understand Grub, it is a great option.

Regards,

Randy.