XP / Linux Dual Boot - GRUB snafu [SOLVED]

[Windependent]

I'm working on a dual boot installation with Win XP and Linux on the same physical drive. (The PC only has one hard disk). I'm running into GRUB problems, and I'm hoping that someone can help.

 

The distro I'm using is Gentoo, which requires all of the disk partitioning, fstab and grub.conf files to be configured manually. I THINK that I've got everything configured properly, but when I try to boot the system Grub halts with the message, "Invalid Partition Table." Aargh.

 

But everything looks right to me. So if anyone can look at the following config files and point out some silly error on my part, I'd appreciate it.

 

Let me preface my posting the structure of the partitions with the statement that XP was already installed on the system, and Linux was added afterward. The hard disk is an 80 GB IDE drive that was partitioned with 40 GB for XP and the remainder of the disk left as unpartitioned space. The unpartitioned space was then used for Gentoo. So it seems that since XP was already occupying the first partition on the drive, linux had to go on the following partitions.

 

Here are my configuration files:

 

here is my disk partition info:

fdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
255 heards, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 82225280 bytes

Device       Boot   Start        End        Blocks        Id    System
/dev/hda1    *          1       4079      32764536         c    W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2    *       4080       4084         40162+       83    Linux
/dev/hda3            4085       4147        506047+       82    Linux Swap
/dev/hda4            4148       9964      46725052+       83    Linux

 

fstab :

 

# <fs>       <mountpoint>    <type>  	<opts>        <dump/pass>
/dev/hda1  /dev/hda1  vfat  auto,noatime,users,umask=0 0 0	0 0
/dev/hda2  /boot  ext2  auto,noatime  1 1
/dev/hda4  /dev/hda4  reiserfs	auto,noatime,notail	0 0
/dev/hda3  none  swap  sw  	0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0	/mnt/cdrom0	auto  noauto,users  0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom1	/mnt/cdrom1	auto  noauto,users,ro  0 0
/dev/fd0  /mnt/floppy	auto  noauto,users  0 0

# NOTE: The next line is critical for boot!
none  	/proc  proc  defaults  0 0
none  	/dev/shm	tmpfs  defaults  0 0

 

and grub.conf:

 

default 1
timeout 30
splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.3-r1
# partition where kernal image (or OS) is located
root (hd0,1)
kernel /kernel-2.6.3-gentoo-r1 root=/dev/hda4

# Win is located on /dev/hda1
title=Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

 

 

unfortunately, i've looked at this stuff so many times that i just can't see what's wrong. any help would be greatly appreciated!

Edited November 9, 2004 by Windependent

[Leo]

I'm not a Gentoo user but a couple of things stand out:

 

in your disk partition info, shouldn't /dev/hda4 have an end value of 9964 rather than 996?

 

Also your /etc/fstab line for /dev/hda1 appears to have too many zeros at the end, I think it ought to read

/dev/hda1  /dev/hda1  vfat  auto,noatime,users,umask=0 0 0

 

The /etc/fstab looks rather odd to me anyway as there does not appear to be any / defined (should this be /dev/hda2 ?) and it looks as though /dev/hda4 is being mounted to itself (should it not be /home?)

 

I would also question the location of your kernel in your menu.lst however this may be where it is on Gentoo, I do not know

[Windependent]

in your disk partition info, shouldn't /dev/hda4 have an end value of 9964 rather than 996?

whoops. that was a typo. you're right, it should have been 9964. that's what the real partition table reads.

 

Also your /etc/fstab line for /dev/hda1 appears to have too many zeros at the end, I think it ought to read

/dev/hda1  /dev/hda1  vfat  auto,noatime,users,umask=0 0 0

i think that the "umask=000" statement is a valid parameter under <opts>, while the "0 0" is a valid parameter under <dump/pass>. you can't see it in my post, but those two sets of zeroes are separated by a tab delimiter. is this right?

 

i'm checking on the rest...

 

Thanks for your help!

[Windependent]

setting the fstab problems aside, my problem was grub related -- the machine kept locking when attempting to load grub, so it wasn't even getting far enough to read the fstab file before the lockup occurred.

 

my problem was that when following the recommended gentoo instructions in the gentoo installation handbook, grub wasn't installing itself on the MBR. i fixed this by installing grub using manual insructions instead of grub-install:

 

Installing GRUB in the MBR:

 

# grub                      (starts the grub shell) 
grub> root (hd0,1)          (Specify where your /boot partition resides)
grub> setup (hd0)           (Install GRUB in the MBR)
grub> quit                  (Exit the GRUB shell)

here's the grub.conf that works for the dual-boot windows system:

 

default 1
timeout 30
splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=Gentoo Linux
# root is on the 3rd linux partition, the 4th disk partition, or (hd0,3) 
#since grub starts indexing at zero
kernel (hd0,1)/kernel-2.6.9-gentoo-r1 root=/dev/hda4

# the next 4 lines are for dual boot windows systems
# in this case, Win is located on /dev/hda1
title=Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

[Leo]

At which point does it fall over?

 

Do you get the initial list of boot options up?

[Windependent]

it initially fell over before the list of boot options came up. presumably that was because i had configured grub but had not written all of the info into the MBR. Duh. After doing that I finally started to receive error codes, which made the problem easy to fix. There are no problems now using the option to boot into Windows. I'm still emerging gentoo onto that PC, so the other boot option isn't viable yet.

 

thanks!