Triple Boot - MDK 10.0 OE, FC3, XP issues

[Pierre04]

Greetings to All,

 

Thanks for the great info here... It has been most beneficial!

 

Have been running triple boot under Lilo sucessfully for a while - MDK 10.0 OE, FC2, and XP - These co-existed just fine...

 

On another system I was using FC3 and XP - They existed just fine... and l liked the KDE 3.3 that FC3 had... Well, time to transition this particular system to XP Media Center Edition.... so thought that I would install FC3 on the triple boot system.

 

Install went fine. No issues at all... until reboot. Went to verify that all OSs had survived, and lo and behold MDK 10.0 OE would not start!

 

Received an error that the root drive was corrupted and needed e2fsck run on it, but I needed a new version of e2fsck! Dug out the MDK 10 manual, and ran the fsck -pa hda5, and no way would it run...

 

So I reinstalled root. Working great, nvidia drivers reinstalled, sweet! I am back up and running with zero data loss and triple booting too!

 

Reboot - load FC3 - run around in there a bit - reboot - load MDK 10 - same error again!!!

 

Reinstall root - yada yada yada - exit to test FC3 - return to MDK 10 - Just NOW completed the 3rd rebuild of MDK 10 root drive and mysteriously the FC3 partitions GOT WHACKED!!! (mumble gruple) Seriously, I said heck with THIS and deleted the FC3 partitions... MDK 10 works pretty well...

 

So - finally the question - Was the different kernel of FC3 introducing files on the MDK partition and messing up the program? Would it be possible to upgrade the e2fsck file and maintain compatibility? I would like to continue expanding the "flavors" of linux that I am exposed to...

 

Sure, I would like to get more familiar with the FC3 KDE 3.3 apps, but sheesh... I am not that interested in rebulding every other day...

 

Thanks in advance for the excellent help available here...

Edited December 4, 2004 by Pierre04

[AussieJohn]

I think your problem has to do with the bootloader. Each time you reinstall, that OS installs its boot loader and overwrites what is already there. It maybe that the mbr is not being completely wiped when the OS installs its bootloader. To save reinstalling Mandrake each time, it may be useful to wipe the mbr totally by using any of the trio of methods available. This will not effect your Windows OS, in fact if you reboot after doing this ,it will simply boot straight into Windows.

 

Then to get back into your mandrake, insert your N0.1 CDROM AND DO A DUMMY UPGRADE. This will only take about 15 to 20 minutes and in it you can resetup the bootloader options. This has you running again and does not involve using command line instructions if you are not familiar with that aspect.

 

(It is a good idea when you get back into Mandrake to go to MCC then <Boot> and do an install bootloader on to floppy disk so you can get back into Mandrake if the mbr gets screwed again. It makes life so much easier.)

 

Then you could do a reinstall of RedHat but this time have it install its bootloader into a floppy disk instead of the mbr. When you return to your Mandrake, you can alter your boot settings for Grub or Lilo to include what will be a now detectable Linux in the form of Red Hat partitions. Just make sure you noted during the RedHat install which partition you had put / (root) on because this is where Redhat will also have its /boot partition. As well you also have a method to boot up RedHat if the MBR gets screwed up again for some reason. If anyone else can add to this then please do so even though I think this will get you there.

 

I hope this little lot helps. Cheers. John.

[arctic]

try running your system with the grub bootloader. it works perfectly on my boxes with fc3 (which uses grub as default and is known to be sometimes a bit buggy with lilo) and grub is easier to set up imho.