Duncan, I have to disagree. Yum is fantastic and a huge improvement over the former lilo. The problem is that you are trying to do too much too soon. You said you are a newbie, but double-booting is an advanced function. Why would you want to double-boot when you already have Linux? It's got everything. (Yes, yes, I also did, when I first switched back when Redhat 5.0 first came out. Now, it's weeks before I need to enter Windows, and then, it's generally just to finally update all the patches and bugfixes, just to keep it up to date and then get back to Linux, again.) I had almost the identical problem, a few nights ago, to the one you are describing. I had had an unpartitioned space physically in front of the partition that Linux was on. I complicated the problem by creating a partition in this empty space, hence the names of my partitions changed: /dev/hda6 became /dev/hda7 and so on. Dutifully, I edited /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/grub.conf and rebooted, thinking how smart I was for having attended to all the necessities. Suddenly grub gave me the error 22, can't find stage 1.5 message. Stage 1.5? I have never worked with those stages before. Shit! What now? And I couldn't even get onto the Internet to look for help, because without grub, I couldn't even resort to Windows. A little shaken, but still nonplussed, I inserted the rescue disc and booted the computer. Stunned, I was told that my partition, or part of it (!) "might" be mounted on /mnt/sysimage. Holy shit! Was everything lost? I was up until past 4 am on this for 2 weeknights in a row and it added 10 years to my apparent age. Anyway, I rebooted again and finally the BIOS, or whatever, finally got the partition table synced and I was able to mount my system with the rescue disc at /mnt/sysimage. I did a chroot /mnt/sysimage, cd there and ls just to make sure, and then grub-install /dev/hda. It gave me some output about the drives found, hd0 and fd0, I think, and then, exit to get out of chroot, and exit again to cause the rescue mode shell to reboot. Whew! It worked and my system was back. That was a close call. Anyway, for dual booting with Windows XP (maybe 2000, too), I have found that installing grub to the MBR of the first hard drive, /dev/hda, is best. Windows has it's boot loader in the first sector of the first partition of this drive, so both co-exist nicely. Also, I really would recommend making a small /boot partition on your first hard drive, about 500Mb is oodles and oodles. Reinstall Linux, or just cp -ax all of your /boot contents (not the directory, just the contents) to this partition, make the change in /etc/fstab to get it mounted at boot time, and... I have gotten off topic LOL Anyway, there is a bit of learning that I had to do to get this thought through. I believe I finally understand and I hope to share it with you here. Like you, I wish there was consistency to make things easier, but for whatever reason, there isn't. Linux calls the hard drive partitions /dev/hda1, hda2... hdb1, hdb2, etc. Grub calls them (hd0,0), (hd0,1)... (hd1,0), (hd1,1), etc. This is really confusing. To make matters worse, you have to use both methods to get everything working right. Here is how I have come to understand it, and it seems to work: any commands that go to Grub, use Grub's system; any commands that go to Linux, use Linux' system. Sounds good? Well, it is about to get complicated... /boot/grub/grub.conf, the grub configuration file, should really only use grub's syntax, but it doesn't. It uses both! The splashimage line and the root (hd0,4) line under the title section use grub syntax, but the line beginning with kernel in the title section uses the Linux syntax (here you are sending a command to the kernel, telling it where the /(root) filesystem is located). Anyway, I hope this helps you; it sure did help me and I finally got it all configured just how I want it. Pete ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
