On Fri, 10 Sep 2004, Paul Howarth wrote:Even simpler, you could use bootpart (http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm) to add an entry to the XP/NT4/Win2K boot menu (c:\boot.ini) to chain-load grub from the first sector of the /boot partition and then you don't have to fiddle with fdisk at all. The Red Hat / Fedora installers all offer the option of installing the boot loader on the first sector of the root (not boot) partition, so this is vey easy to set up. Using this method, you don't even need grub to be installed on a primary partition.
Interesting. I knew that was possible, but I had a working solution so never researched how to do it. But it does solve some issues that come up with the limitation on primary partitions on some laptops. (If you know the format, you can edit c:\boot.ini by hand, but be careful!)
You still need bootpart (or equivalent) because it writes a short "boot sector" file that is called up from the boot.ini entry. The program in that file is customised to chain load the bootloader from the first sector of the selected partition. Once installed though, you never need to change it unless your partition table changes.
The grub option actually does offer to install on whatever partition contains /boot. If you have a separate /boot (an old habit from when /boot needed to be in the first 1024 cylinders), then that's /boot. If not, it's /.
Hmm, never noticed that but it would certainly make sense.
Cheers, Paul.
