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Thread: dual-boot XP knoppmyth confusion

  1. #1
    I need a coffee jamena's Avatar
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    Question dual-boot XP knoppmyth confusion

    I'm getting rather confused now... so it's time to ask stupid questions

    My pc has two hard drives, both PATA, both on primary IDE, 120Gb master, 80Gb slave.

    The master 120Gb is my windows drive which is partitioned (strangely) as follows (partition numbering done by windows, as reported in cfdisk under linux)
    /hda1 is FAT32 and is where windows stuck it's boot partition, along with some confused programs
    /hda5 is NTFS where XPpro is installed, along with a few programs that couldn't handle being elsewhere
    /hda6 is NTFS where the bulk of the programs, games, and files are stored

    The slave 80Gb is where I want to install linux/mythTV so I figred knoppmyth would be a good idea. This is where the problems start...

    I have to use the "manual install" option as knoppmyth is heading for hdb rather than the default hda. I've tried partitioning the slave drive into bits for linux. 6Gb for / 2Gb for swap 2Gb for /cache rest for /myth. The install instructions give ambiguous info on this saying make 3 partitions, then it names 4, and the installer only wants one...arg. Anyway, it seems happy with me selecting hdb1 and installs sucessfully...supposedly using lilo.

    on booting up I stop the pc from going in to XP and select to boot from IDE1 (slave drive)

    it finds the boot record, but:
    GRUB loading stage 1.5
    ...
    Error 15 (means file not found - what file I don't know...)



    earlier I had a go at installing Ubuntu, and that went fine, it installed happily on the slave drive, and set up a dual-boot selection thingy etc. I did have to use the XP recovery to fixboot and fixmbr to get windows to work again after I overwrote ubuntu of course but what I really want is for knoppmyth to work! Must be something in the setiings during install that I'm missing...

    if I opened up the pc, removed the primary master, set the primary slave to master, installed knoppmyth on there, then set it back to slave, put in the original master, should I be able to select to boot up off the slave drive?

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    Agent of the System ikonia's Avatar
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    it looks like you've just missunderstood the whole process.

    1.) your windows drive layout doesn't matter to linux - Windows will put windows on the first partition of the primary drive
    2.) your installing the Linux install to the second disk, so you have a choice put the boot loader on the second disk and force from the bios to boot from the second disk, or put the boot loader on the primary disk and tell the boot loader that another OS is on the second disk.
    3.) in reality you only NEED 2 partitions to install linux root and swap thats it, you can do as many as you want though and lay it out as you want.

    I suggest you use a dos boot disk with fdisk to remove the boot sector on your primary drive and try again keeping in mind the points I've made above.
    It is Inevitable.....


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    I need a coffee jamena's Avatar
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    Right then, windows is as described, installed on the primary master. I used the XP disk manager to remove the partitions from hdb and shut down.

    I then created partitions as follows:
    hdb1 6Gb ext3, bootable
    hdb2 2Gb for swap
    hdb3 rest-of-drive for /myth
    -rebooted out of habit after editing the partition table-
    options available:
    I told knoppmyth to install to /dev/hdb1
    and to place /myth on /dev/hdb3
    and to "place lilo in the mbr" (other option is to place lilo on the partition)

    I hit f11 to bring up the "boot menu", select IDE-1 and get Grub error 15
    if I boot off IDE-0 it goes into winXP


    ----------

    perhaps it's a case of changing the bootloader on hda1 to point at the hdb1 partition or something as directly booting off hdb doesn't seem to be working? can I place an entry in boot.ini along the lines of
    multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1) something

    or alternatively booting off the knoppmyth cd and somehow installing and editing lilo manually myself to point at the right partition?

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    I need a coffee jamena's Avatar
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    learning curve, what learning curve?

    it's a little more enticing now

    for the moment I have given up on making knoppmyth the linux option in the dual boot and have gone with ubuntu, however my pc now works in a very very odd manner. I installed Ubuntu on IDE-1, hdb1, no problems, and requested that it place grub on hd1. This is where it gets strange... If I select to boot from IDE-1 Grub loads up fine with the linux options and one for windows. All of the linux options produce the error 15 message, file not found, although they are all pointing at root (hd1,0) as they should be? However, if I select the windows option from the IDE-1 grub I then get presented with a lilo options menu for booting Linux, windows (hda1), winnt (hda4), winnt(hda5). From here linux will boot ubuntu sucessfully, and windows will boot XP properly. You would have thought this means the windows bootloader has been overwritten by lilo, but if the pc is left to boot from IDE-0 it boots stright to XP, so the XP bootloader would appear to be fine???Where is lilo hiding could be a good question

    strangeness...
    perhaps it's a BIOS thing where booting from IDE-1 alters the nomenclature of the drives under linux and hd1,0 points at IDE-0 rather than IDE-1? The lilo part is the confusing bit because it's only there if I boot off IDE-1, and then select the windows option...it shouldn't be there at all as far as I can work out?

    teatime...


    p.s. would this suggest that the knoppmyth install of lilo placed lilo somewhere not-quite-right from the mbr perspective but somewhere that boots once the pc is running...? gah

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    Agent of the System ikonia's Avatar
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    the strangest things is your selecting to install lilo and it is installing grub !!

    I'd remove the boot sector on both disk1 and disk2 before trying again.

    I'd also really pay close attention to what your doing as its either

    a.) The Live CD is broke and installs grub when you select lilo
    b.) your making a mistake

    it HAS to be b really as if it was broke there would be hundreds of bugs logged about it, and if its option b that suggests you may not be reading the rest of the install correctly.
    It is Inevitable.....


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    I need a coffee jamena's Avatar
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    I have a feeling that Grub was put there by Ubuntu when I was trying it out. The lilo section I am seeing now was either put there by a knoppmyth install attempt, or when I was trying to reinstall it after having checked /etc/lilo.conf to see what was happening (had a friend helping via msn on another pc)

    I think that the Knoppmyth install script expects only one hard drive, or at least expects to go on IDE-0. The manual install requires toggling between the install and a console window or two where you need to edit the config files. It's a bit on the homebrew side I think, so not as slickly set up as ubuntu, which does pretty much just work (strange grub-lilo-xp bootloader threesome aside)

    The other thing that springs to mind is that although the ubuntu install is pretty much working that perhaps that after the bios is told to boot from IDE-1 that linux/grub is not seeing hd0 and hd1 in the correct order (master=0, slave=1)...

    Quote Originally Posted by ikonia View Post
    remove the boot sector
    1 - is there a straightforward command I should be using to do this (probably via the liveCD I would imagine?) as I'm not entirely certain how to start here...
    2 - would this destroy the data on my windows boot partition or render windows inoperable (i.e. a bigger problem than recovery-fixboot-fixmbr)

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    I need a coffee jamena's Avatar
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    okay - vaguely sorted out part of what is going on.

    Ubuntu installed fine to hd1/ide-1 but when I tell the pc to boot from IDE-1 / primary slave it gets picked up in linux as ho0 rather than hd1, so changing the line in the grub boot thing from root (hd1,0) to root (hd0,0) works fine. Still not sure where lilo is hiding though

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