dual boot problem

[hawklord]

hi all,

 

don't know whether this is the right place but here goes,

 

i have windows 2000 on 1 hdd and mandriva 2008 on another hdd (installed from a live cd)

 

i want to have one of these options but i am a little stuck

 

1) to boot mandriva from w2k, i have used a program called bootpart, when run via a command window i get all the available options, but non will edit my boot.ini to show the linux entry,

i tried another program called grub4dos, i copied my menu.lst to a flash drive and put it at the root of 'c', then added this line to my boot.ini

C:\GRLDR="Mandriva", when i re-booted i got to options to boot from so i chose mandriva and got 'error 20' and 'selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by bios'

 

bootpart - http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

 

grub4dos - http://grub4dos.jot.com/WikiHome

 

2) to boot w2k from mandriva, i have searched and searched and it seems i need to add this to my menu.lst

 

title windows

map (hd0,0)

map (hd1,0)

rootnoverify (hd1,0)

makeactive

chainloader +1

 

the problem is i can't seem to edit the file, each time i try it says i don't have permission, i login as root but it still won't let me, i have even tried using an edited spare one (from the flashdrive),

 

i know i can dual boot with grub in the mbr of windows, i had an episode where i needed to 'ghost' my windows and got 'ntldr is missing', running fixboot and fixmbr from the recovery console didn't work, had to boot from floppy to retrieve important files, then re-install, so i don't want to be put in that position again,

 

so can anyone help - thanks

[scarecrow]

If I understand properly, you have installed grub at the Windows partition. You won't be able to edit it, unless you use the "ntfs-3g" driver for accessing your windows partition.

But I'm curious: why don't you edit menu.lst within windows?

If you want to have the two OS'es being completely independent (no chainloading and such stuff), then

1. Install W2K first at HD1

2. Install Mandriva in HD2, and put grub to the root partition, the /boot partition (if you have created one) or the HD2 MBR - your choice.

3 Install GaG as primary loader. It needs no HD space to install (just the MBR of the first HD), can be installed/uninstalled very easily from the bootCD medium, can boot from several different HD's... IMHO it's the least complex and safest solution.

[hawklord]

hi,

 

sorry, you may have miss-understood,

 

i have w2k installed on 'c', no grub at all

 

mandriva was installed on a sepparate hdd with no other hdd's attached to my system, using default options from a live cd (including grub)

 

my system is now set up as -

windows 2000 - master

mandriva - slave

 

at the moment dual booting is a pain, i would like to have a boot option from grub (but i would need to edit the menu.lst - mandriva won't let me) or boot from a boot loader via windows (eg bootpart or grub4dos) but i have come up against a few problems,

 

thanks

[scarecrow]

I don't understand how Mandriva doesn't allow you editing menu.lst... it's impossible, as long as you edit the file as root: Simply (under KDE) press alt+F2

kdesu "kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst"

(provide the root password)

Should work just fine, unless you initially mount your root partition as read-only (highly unlikely), or you have a separate /boot partition which is mounted as read-only. The second case is more usual, but the cure is obvious and simple: remounting the /boot partition as rw.

Can you give the output of two commands?

cat /etc/fstab

and

cat /boot/grub/menu.lst

 

Forget about grub4dos and bootpart- both are not needed. Nor does W2K's boot.ini need any editing.

Edited November 11, 2007 by scarecrow

[hawklord]

hi,

 

thanks for your help,

 

i have managed to edit my menu.lst to show -

 

title windows

map (hd0,0)

map (hd1,0)

rootnoverify (hd1,0)

makeactive

chainloader +1

 

but upon re-boot (using ctrl,alt and delete (see below)) and choosing windows, i get this error -

 

map (hd0,0)

error 11 : unrecognized device string

press any key to continue

 

 

i have tried my windows hdd on cable select and slave, but get the error with both,

 

i also have one other niggly thing - when i log off i can't shut my pc down or log back in, i just have a blank screen untill my monitor switches off, i have to shut down with the button on my tower,

 

thanks again for your help

Edited November 12, 2007 by hawklord

[scarecrow]

I asked you to give the output of two commands... not editing menu.lst or swapping IDE cables.

The shutdown issue is an ACPI one. If you are sure you are running the latest bios revision available, you can try a couple of grub switches to shutdown properly. But this should be done after achieving dualbooting.

Edited November 12, 2007 by scarecrow

[hawklord]

hi,

 

sorry, the output of the commands,

 

1)

 

/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults 1 1

/dev/hda6 /home ext3 defaults 1 2

none /proc proc defaults 0 0

/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0

/dev/hdb1 /media/hd ntfs umask=0022,nls=utf8,sync,ro 0 0

/dev/hdb2 /media/hd2 ntfs umask=0022,nls=utf8,sync,ro 0 0

 

2)

 

 

timeout 10

color black/cyan yellow/cyan

gfxmenu (hd0,0)/boot/gfxmenu

default 0

 

title linux

kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=/dev/hda1 resume=/dev/hda5 splash=silent vga=788

initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

 

title linux-nonfb

kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux-nonfb root=/dev/hda1 resume=/dev/hda5

initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

 

title failsafe

kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=failsafe root=/dev/hda1 failsafe

initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

[scarecrow]

Have swapped IDE cables since these files were created?

If you did, then it's no surprise they don't work. In other words: The Linux drive should be the master one, and the W2K the slave one.

After putting them like that, boot at your Linux normally. Then, go again

kdesu "kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst"

and make your menu.lst like that:

timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
gfxmenu (hd0,0)/boot/gfxmenu
default 0

title linux
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=/dev/hda1 resume=/dev/hda5 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

title linux-nonfb
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux-nonfb root=/dev/hda1 resume=/dev/hda5
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

title failsafe
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=failsafe root=/dev/hda1 failsafetitle WinXP
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img 

title Win2000
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

 

You can easily see that it's (quite a) bit different than the one you were passing.

Your fstab entries are OK, although you can mount the windows partitions as read-only (and also the "sync" option is pretty pointless for a read-only drive... but that's another story). If you want read/write access to them, you must install and use "ntfs-3g". This is not an official kernel module, but don't panic- IMHO it's currently 100% safe and reliable.

Is it any better now?

Edited November 12, 2007 by scarecrow

[hawklord]

hi scarecrow,

 

you are a star, it worked, i can dual boot without swapping drives/bios editing,

 

i've been at this for a month searching and searching and you do it in a few posts (less if i would have followed properly :blush: )

 

if i ask nice and kindly - can you point me in the right direction for my shutdown problem

 

[ianw1974]

Can you explain a bit more about your shutdown problem. For example, what do you click? Do you click Shutdown? Reboot? Log Out? What desktop environment are you using? KDE? Gnome? What login manager? GDM or KDM?

[scarecrow]

First, lets fix a typo:

rootnoverify (hd1,0)

(the first instance, under "title failsafe")

should rather be

rootnoverify (hd0,0)

 

For the shutdown issue, follow a bit this long thread, and if all the suggestions about noapic/ nolapic/ etcetera switches do not work, please come back.

Many times it's simply a buggy BIOS issue and there aren't much that can be done, e.g. I have a media center at home which I manage remotely. I can easily shut it down by "sudo halt" in a ssh shell, or by simply pressing the power button for a fraction of a second. But I haven't found a way to reboot the machine in one go, no matter which dirty tricks I've invented! Oh well...

Edited November 12, 2007 by scarecrow

[hawklord]

hi,

 

slight problem has popped up, when i use

 

kdesu "kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst"

 

the file opens but appears empty, but when i navigate to the file its there, so i can't edit it

 

Can you explain a bit more about your shutdown problem. For example, what do you click? Do you click Shutdown? Reboot? Log Out? What desktop environment are you using? KDE? Gnome? What login manager? GDM or KDM?

 

mandriva 2008 live cd install, grub, kdm and kde,

i click on log out and then end session, sometimes it comes back to login and i can use the options at the bottom to power off,

 

i read the link, but its way over my head, not been using linux long - slowly getting used to it for the big change over from windows

Edited November 13, 2007 by hawklord

[hawklord]

hi,

 

this login issue seems to have affected start up as well, when i power on my pc and choose mandriva, it goes through the motions of loading, when the loading bar has nearly completed my screen goes blank and my monitor goes into stand by, i have to use ctrl, alt and delete to re-boot,

my windows is ok (posting this from windows)

[scarecrow]

The above command bringing up a blanc file means that you make a typo, somewhere.

Anyway, simply

kdesu kwrite

and then navigate to the file graphically.

 

The no-X issue is not relevant to the grub one. You must have edited either /etc/X11/xorg.conf or /etc/inittab in a bad way.

In the first case (bad xorg.conf) you can press (instead of alt+ctrl+del) alt+ctrl+backspace a couple of times- this is killing the nonperforming xserver, and probing again for more useful settings. If nothing good comes after pressing the above key combo 2-3 times, then alt+ctrl+F1 (up to alt+ctrl+F6) should bring you a fully working shell with no X running... and now you can correct xorg.conf either manually, or by running "mcc" and creating a new xserver configuration.

In the second case (borked inittab) it's possible that you have no usable tty's, so you can't login. In that case the solution (apart from reinstalling) is booting fron the installation CD in recovery mode, and correcting /etc/inittab.

Edited November 13, 2007 by scarecrow

[hawklord]

hi,

 

thanks, ctrl, alt + backspace worked and i have corrected the (hd1,0) to (hd0,0), as for the rest - as far as i know i havn't edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf or /etc/inittab (i didn't even know they were there)

 

.........and now you can correct xorg.conf either manually, or by running "mcc" and creating a new xserver configuration.

 

this is not something i know about, (i am learning all the time)