Many thanks to all who responded. Here is a summary of the proposed solutions: >>I have a conventional dual-boot system: >>Win XP on IDE primary master, grub in MBR, >>FC2 on primary slave. >> >>If either Windows or FC2 is running, I can >>access it with VNC. Of course, a reboot will >>switch to the default OS, if the other is running. >>However, I don't know how to switch back. >> >>Is there a good way to boot FC2 from Windows? >>Or to boot Windows from FC2? Jacques Dimanche suggested a good way to boot Windows from Linux. I chose this method because it is minimally invasive: >... I would make my linux be the default OS to boot into. >You mentioned that you can control both OS'es remotely so >this shouldn't be a problem. If you are in windows, then you >can just reboot to boot into linux. While in linux, you can >reboot into windows by executing the following commands: >enter grub with: > grub --no-floppy (don't probe floppy drives makes it go faster if >you do not have a drive like all my machines) >in the grub command line: > savedefault --default=2 --once (replace 2 with the appropriate >selection that is your windows option in grub.conf) > quit >Then you can reboot and it will boot into Windows. When you reboot >again, it will go back into Linux. [Python script for automating the above snipped] Other methods proposed: 1. Use a FAT /boot partition, so grub.conf can be edited from Windows. 2. ... Have the XP bootloader in the MBR, and have it chain-load grub to boot Linux. The first partition on the first disk is a small FAT partition that contains XP's boot.ini file. By manipulating this file (which, since it's on a filesystem that can be both read and written from both XP and Linux, can be done from either OS), I can choose which OS to boot by default and hence, what will get booted if I just reboot. 3. ... Use ext2fsd (http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/), an ext2 filesystem driver for Windows, which could allow you to modify grub.conf from Windows. (1) and (2) allow you to have either OS be the default, so the desired system will come up e.g. after a power failure. However, I did not have the foresight to set this up in advance, and did not want to risk losing data in the conversion. (3) is probably fine, though I have a personal distrust of programs that provide write access to non-native filesystems. Thanks again, Stewart
