Dual booting with GRUB

chumley, Get a Knoppix 3.7 live CD. You can rescue from there.

Then install Knoppix and you will have your 2boot system.

Bah. Get a slax cd.

http://slax.org

[chumley]

Thanks for the tips guys. I have already had a go at Slcakware 10 and I had nothing but trouble with it so I went to the Fedora Core 3. Much better except for the dual boot prob. Tried Mepis 2004.06 live CD last night and nothing seemed to work when I tried to use it. It didn't seem to detect my hardware. So anyway, I am back to square one. I would certainly try Knoppix as that does work off of the CD and doesn't have to be installed to use, right? if it would allow me to get into XP to fix the dual boot issue. Do I even need another system in order to fix the dual boot issue?????? Can't I do it thru grub.conf??????

[Fatal Error]

They told me to do things in Grub conf. That was a mess.

Knoppix Live CD will, I think, let you make a xp boot floppy or at least you can burn all your stuff to CD and then start over.

There are a ton of tuts about rescue with Knoppix, at least one of them was floating around on the f00.

http://www.knoppix.net/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=knoppix
http://www.pjls16812.pwp.blueyonder....pix/index.html
You can DL this book for FREE.

Just get/install Knoppix 3.7. Forget everything else, don't listen to any talk about other distros. I have some Ubuntu CD packets if you want one. PM me your address and I'll mail one to ya.

[N0thing]

all right i forgot to mention as well that sometimes
core 2 would totally screw over xp to the point xp would need to be reinstalled, not sure bout in your case but if the knoppix trick dont work heres what id do and this was teh only way i fixed it for me i had the same issue

boot up knoppix moun the ntfs partition create a new partition or get some space hell burn some cds get all your personal data off, go into program files grab setting saves, documents the works burn it the cds

start qtparted format the whole hard drive and create a partition for xp, just choose one of the fats, you could also lay the groundwork for core 3 or do it with disk druid

install xp, dont customize just yet, boot up core 3 install, test the both, to get to the grub menu youll have to press enter at some point during boot, then once your sure both are working then customize and tweak the both

on a sidenote core 3 is a good distro especially with apt-get rpm or yum as package handlers

[chumley]

I am now using Fedora Core 3 and my dual booting got trashed somehow. See my posts above. Well, I mounted /windows and can access my XP files, but I can't burn them to CD because the CD won't mount. When I try to mount the cdrom (it won't mount itself) I get the message:

"[chumley@localhost ~]$ mount /dev/hdc
/dev/hdc: Input/output error
mount: /dev/hdc: can't read superblock"

Here is the contents of the fstab file and it looks kind of messy:

# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdd /media/cdrecorder auto pamconsole,fscontext=system_ubject_r:removable_t,ro,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrecorder1 auto pamconsole,fscontext=system_ubject_r:removable_t,ro,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto pamconsole,fscontext=system_ubject_r:removable_t,exec,noauto,managed 0 0

What do I have to do with it so that I can get the cdrom to work so that I can copy files from /windows, so that I can hopefully get the grub loader to work?
Here is the contents of grub.conf:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd1,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
Thanks guys for being there and holding my hand (figuratively, of course.)

[comtux]

After you install your GRUB, try to boot into your linux, login as root and go to /boot/grub (cd /boot/grub), use your editor to change the grub.conf something like as below, if you already add the windows entry into your grub.conf as below, still don't work please post your grub.conf here.

#
# Sample boot menu configuration file
#

# Boot automatically after a minute.
timeout 60

# By default, boot the second entry.
default 1

# Fallback to the first entry.
fallback 0

title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
makeactive

# For booting Linux
title Linux
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4 root=/dev/hda5 video=matrox:vesa:261

[comtux]

Another way to dual boot is to use slackware and 2 harddrives install windows xp on the first harddrive and then install slackware on the second and slackware will recognize windows and add it to lilo. See the problem with xp is that it doesnt deal well with os other than windows so if you install linux first and then windows windows will recognize that it isnt the first os install and it will end up corrupted. I tested this method and the one above both work .

[chumley]

comtux,
I have XP on one hd and Fedora Core 3 on another hd. XP has been installed for years and I just installed FC 3 on last week. Now I cannot boot into XP. I used the above grub configuration you gave me and I got an "Error 22: No such partition" message. It took me 2 hours to change the grub.conf and be able to boot into FC3 again. I got into rescue mode and changed the grub.conf configuration back to what it had been and now it works again, but I still cannot boot into XP. I am d/l knoppix on my wife's machine and will try that tommorrow.

[comtux]

Please post your grub config that was just an example.
And i would also like to know what programs you use that keeps that winxp partition on your hard drive.

[penguin_powered]

See my dual boot configuration below for a variation that no one has addressed yet in this topic.

Notice the use of the map command twice to remap Drive 0 to Drive 1 and Drive 1 to Drive 0. That's because my Master drive is the one Linux is on and Windows 2000 is on my slave drive. Windows MUST be on the 1st drive (so I fool it into thinking it is...lol).

To get Windows installed correctly I used the BIOS to map IDE1 as Master and IDE0 as slave. Once Windows was installed I reset the BIOS to IDE0 as Master and IDE1 as slave--to match the actual physical cabling and jumpers on the drives. Then I installed SuSE Linux and let the SuSE install progam detect the hardware as it really is, without any deception from the BIOS.

Since Linux is on the Master drive and Windows is on the slave drive, and I wanted GRUB to be my boot manager, I had to use the map command twice to get it to work. Now I'm using GRUB as my boot manager to run either OS (Linux or Windows 2000) from GRUB's boot menu, thanks to the map command.

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Thu Jul 14 15:01:21 2005

color white/blue black/light-gray
default 0
timeout 30
gfxmenu (hd0,5)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE LINUX 9.2
kernel (hd0,5)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 vga=0x317 selinux=0 splash=silent resume=/dev/hda5 desktop elevator=as showopts
initrd (hd0,5)/boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader (hd1,0)+1

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

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- SUSE LINUX 9.2
kernel (hd0,5)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off vga=normal noresume selinux=0 barrier=off nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 3
initrd (hd0,5)/boot/initrd