Fedora Users — Re: Problem in booting new installation of Fedora Core 4

On 11/6/05, Tony Nelson <tonynelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

At 12:14 PM +0500 11/6/05, Enlightened Moderation wrote:
>I did a new installation of Fedora Core 4 on a system with 2 hard drives
>and which already had Windows XP installed. The configuration before
>installing Fedora Core 4 was as following:
>hda 20 GB has two ntfs partitions with windows xp installed in the first
>bootable partition. hdb 40 GB had only one 20 GB bootable fat32 partition.
>Rest of space i.e. 20 GB was set aside free for Fedora Core 4.
>
>I allowed Fedora to do automatic partition in the free
>space reserved.Also, I allowed to automatically select the place to
>install grub ( I did not opt for advance grub options).
>
>The installation proceeded normal until it congratulated me for completing
>the installation and to reboot the system. When I did a reboot, however, I
>did not get any grub boot loader prompt, and instead booted straight into
>Windows XP like before.
>
>I figured out that Fedora did not install the boot loader in the MBR of
>the first drive and instead installed in the first sector of /boot in the
>second drive. Therefore, I made my BIOS to boot from the second drive
>(hdb). However, I get a prompt telling me "Missing operating system".

The BIOS change may have renumbered the drives so grub was confused.

Or may be it looked for boot sector in the first partition of the drive, whereas

/boot was perhaps not the first partition. I don't know if I am right!!!

>Please let me know how can I correct this to have a dual boot system with
>windows XP and Fedora Core 4.

You can set up your boot.ini file to chain to grub if you want.  You need
to copy the grub bootsector from the linux partition (or wherever it was
put) into a file on your boot drive and add a line to boot.ini .

I used the rescue CD to copy the bootsector, mounting a floppy and then
using dd to copy the bootsector to a file on the floppy.  I just stumbled
through the process, probably using man a lot.  I then rebooted into
MSWindows and copied that file onto my C: drive as C:\linux.bin, and added
a line to boot.ini, something like:

C:\linux.bin="FC3"

I think, it would be easier for me to do this except that I would need to look

for some help on dd; may be I can find some information from the web.

However, I would still be interested doing it using grub. Some info I collected

using linux rescue is posted here for more help that I would need for my

venture with grub. [Actually, I have been using linux for some time now.

However, each time I mess up grub, I do a re-install either windows or

linux to fix the problem; never doing it right by changing the grub

configuration. This time, I want to do it right by doing the necessary changes

in the system needed.]

fdisk -l produced the following:

Disk /dev/hda: 20.4 GB, 20416757760 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2482 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/hda1 * 1 1241 9968301 7 HPFS/NTFS

/dev/hda2 1242 2481 9960300 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)

/dev/hda5 1242 2481 9960268+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/hdb: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/hdb1 1 2433 19543041 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

/dev/hdb2 * 2434 2446 104422+ 83 Linux

/dev/hdb3 2447 4865 19430617+ 8e Linux LVM

And my grub.conf file in /boot is as under:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda

# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file

# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that

# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.

# root (hd1,1)

# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00

# initrd /initrd-version.img

#boot=/dev/hda

default=1

timeout=5

splashimage=(hd1,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

hiddenmenu

title Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4)

root (hd1,1)

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet

initrd /initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.img

# Should be Windows XP

title Other

rootnoverify (hd0,0)

chainloader +1

Please let me know what changes to make in grub.conf for the system

to work.

In my case, I also had some trouble booting MSWindows, as I had Extended
Partitions that got renumbered when I added Basic Partitions.  I don't
think you will have that problem.
____________________________________________________________________
TonyN.:'                       <mailto:tonynelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
     '                              http://www.georgeanelson.com/

Thanks in advance.

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