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| Thread ID: 65822 | 2006-02-01 05:18:00 | installing Linux | jupiter1 (2578) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 425963 | 2006-02-02 23:16:00 | Hi Jen, Thanks. I did all you suggested and it work just like you said including the default of Grub to the MBR on hda. Unfortunately it still doesnt work. I suspect this is because the win2k disk is formatted in the NTFS format so Fedora cant see it. I tried loading Grub to hdb (the 8.4 linux HDD) and hdc (the back up win2k hdd) and then tried going into bios and booting from these other drives but none of this worked either. Is my HDD h/ware setup suitable ? I really dont want to get into re-formatting my win2k drives to FAT and re-installing everything. I'm sick of re-installing windows every time it goes awol, that's why I want to try Linux ! However, I can't afford too much downtime, that's why I have two win2k systems. Cheers, Phil. |
jupiter1 (2578) | ||
| 425964 | 2006-02-02 23:53:00 | Get yourself a hard drive caddy system . The base goes into one of the drive bays and each hard drive with its own OS goes in its own caddy and slotted in when you want to use it . That way you don't need to muck around with Grub and boot . ini files . It's way better and allows you to play or work with each OS to your heart's content then switch to the other with a yank of the caddy (after closing down, of course) when you have had enough . |
FoxyMX (5) | ||
| 425965 | 2006-02-03 00:09:00 | Where the bootloader resides has nothing to do with the file system used (NTFS, FAT 32, etc). I supect you have a confused boot sector now, one on hda (C drive) and one on hdb (whatever windows has assigned, prob E). I got into a real pickle with this when I reloaded a Linux distro which previously was set to use hdb, but muggins here decided to use hda instead without letting the original bootloader in on the secret (in fact, I'm pretty sure it knew what I was up to, it's just that I ignored advice). I presume you can still get into win2k, which is a good sign. My advice would be to use a Live Linux CD like *cough* Mepis, which runs from the CD without (necessarilly touching your HDD) and has the ability to change your boot partition without you having to edit anything. Once done, I'd be inclined to carry on and install Mepis (or some such) as it's a smaller and, IMO, easier to use for those having there first look at Linux. Edit: If you want a Mepis CD, I can provide one or pop over to www.mepis.org |
Murray P (44) | ||
| 425966 | 2006-02-03 07:29:00 | I agree with Murray, and think you may have one confused system now because it should of just *worked*. FoxMX's suggestion is ideal for your situation. If you get one of these 3.5" Removable Rack & Tray (www.dse.co.nz) plus a spare tray, then there is no risk to your Windows installations (or Linux!) while you are getting familiar with Linux. The rack fits in a spare 4.25" bay and you just switch the trays depending upon which OS you would like to run. An even better idea would be to get another hard drive for Linux and install your current 8.4 gig drive as a slave formatted as FAT32. That way both OS's can access the shared drive and files can be shared between them. |
Jen (38) | ||
| 425967 | 2006-02-04 01:19:00 | It should have worked. You can't have a "confused boot sector" even if you have put Grub on both disks. Only one of those modified MBRs is accessed when you start the computer. The BIOS loads the first level boot code from the disk it is told to use. That code is executed to read the code for the rest of the loader. Any code in that sector on the other drive doesn't matter. Its partition table will be read if necessary, but that part of the sector is not affected by loading Grub or LILO. Did you try telling the BIOS to boot from the 8GB disk? Windows can see a drive whichj has Linux on it. But it says that an ext2 (or any other Linux) filesystem isn't formatted. Windows is ignorant. ;) There are programmes around which will mount the Linux file systems on Windows, but the best way is to have a FAT32 partition which both can see and work with. |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 425968 | 2006-02-04 23:37:00 | hi all if any one is on dialup do you have problems with a linux sys finding drivers in particular the modem driver i have mandrake 9.1 .10.ubuntu and lycoris disks but the modem driver is very hard to configure i can configure man,9.1 but any thing after that thve changed the konsole configurtion marty124 |
marty124 (9697) | ||
| 425969 | 2006-02-05 05:11:00 | It should have worked. You can't have a "confused boot sector" even if you have put Grub on both disks. Only one of those modified MBRs is accessed when you start the computer. The BIOS loads the first level boot code from the disk it is told to use. That code is executed to read the code for the rest of the loader. Any code in that sector on the other drive doesn't matter. Its partition table will be read if necessary, but that part of the sector is not affected by loading Grub or LILO. Did you try telling the BIOS to boot from the 8GB disk? Windows can see a drive whichj has Linux on it. But it says that an ext2 (or any other Linux) filesystem isn't formatted. Windows is ignorant. ;) There are programmes around which will mount the Linux file systems on Windows, but the best way is to have a FAT32 partition which both can see and work with. Ah well, what I ultimately ended up with was a corrupted boot sector. Maybe it was just coincidence that I had changed where the (Lilo at the time) boot partition resided. |
Murray P (44) | ||
| 425970 | 2006-02-06 23:35:00 | I doubt if it was corrupted. LILO has to be told about changes. ESP is still not programmable. If you make changes, you change the lilo.conf file accordingly and run /sbin/lilo to change the boot manager section of the MBR. It doesn't do that automatically. The documentation tells you that. ;) Grub works differently: it reads the grub.conf file each time. | Graham L (2) | ||
| 425971 | 2006-02-07 00:59:00 | Different installation though GL, I installed off a new CD (same OS, diff ver), to a different partition using a different boot partition (and thinking I had preserved my old home folder separately). I didn't edit anything in the old installation, belatedly I tried to edit the new (uh-oh!). WIndows, of course was estatic, because I hadn't told it either, but I attempted to from the recovery function by booting the Windows CD (uh-oh! x2). What I got after that was some squiggly ASCII characters playing cards when I attempted to boot. The more I tried the deeper the hole got. I'd bore you with the details about examining the boot sector, etc, using a rescue CD, but, I suspect, neither of us would be able to fathom what I was blathering about :D |
Murray P (44) | ||
| 425972 | 2006-02-11 02:03:00 | Hi Guys, Been away for a while. I got a live cd of Linux and ran it. It saw all my HDD's including the 8.4Gig Linux HDD. Grub was on there. But I still can not boot into it. The 8.4 Linux HDD is slaved to the Win2k HDD on IDE Chnl 0. Could this be the problem ? Will I have to make it master on IDE 0 or maybe IDE1 ? IDE1 master has a bootable copy of Win2k (as back up) which has now been corrupted by my attempts to install Grub. Any idears anyone ? Regards, Phil |
jupiter1 (2578) | ||
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